"James White - Custom Fitting" - читать интересную книгу автора (White James)

the time being. She studied his sketches and measurements with interest, working out the yardages of
material and trimmings needed for the job. Hewlitt should be ashamed of himself, she said, for trying to
make her believe such a tall story. She reminded him that in her youth she once had to make a costume
for a stage horse. The reason for the number of costumes required, particularly the sets of underwear,
was unclear, she said; but no doubt they were being used in a sophisticated pantomime or farce in which
the stage horse was expected to partially disrobe. The detail required in the fly fastenings, she added
disapprovingly, probably meant that it was a very sophisticated and naughty show.

"Not at all, dear," said Hewlitt with a perfectly straight face. "It will be more in the nature of a
spectacular, and you'll be able to see the highlights, and our costumes, on TV"

Hewlitt, who had always held moral cowardice to be the better part of valor, noted her pleased and
excited expression and said nothing more.

During the three days and for most of the intervening nights before Scrennagle was due for his first fitting,
the pleasure and the sense of excitement remained with Mrs. Hewlitt, even though on one occasion she
said that there had been a time when they would have refused such a gimmicky commission. Hewlitt
replied by saying that the work required the highest standards of tailoring and finish, regardless of its
ultimate destination, and that the work was the most professionally challenging as well as the most
remunerative he had ever been given. But secretly he was becoming prey to self-doubts.
His problem was to design, cut, and build a suit which would not make a horse look like a man but like a
very well-dressed and dignified horse. The whole idea was ridiculous, yet Scrennagle was much too
important a personage to be left open to the slightest suggestion of ridicule.

As Hewlitt had expected, the first fitting was visually a disaster. The fore and hind trouser legs were
unpressed, shapeless, and held together temporarily with tacking stitches, while the embryo morning coat
looked even worse with just one sleeve attached and tacking cotton holding together the lapel canvas,
fronts, and shoulder wadding. While he plied his needle, chalk, and pins, Hewlitt transmitted confidence
and reassurance for all he was worth; but it was obvious that neither Scrennagle nor Fox was receiving.

The Foreign Office official looked desperately worried and unhappy, and the pattern of wrinkling and
puckering on the ambassador's features was almost certainly the extraterrestrial equivalent of these
emotions.

Hewlitt kept this own doubts to himself and did his best to retrieve something from the situation by
producing the first two sets of underwear, both of which fitted perfectly. He explained that these were
relatively simple garments made from material which stretched and clung. He ignored the hints dropped
by both Scrennagle and Fox that it might, after all, be better to settle for the horse blanket over
underwear idea, and he requested a second fitting in four days' time.

Scrennagle's jacket was a large and structurally complex garment which covered not only the forward
torso but the body back to the hindquarters. It was cut away sharply at the front, after which the skirt
maintained a level line two inches below the point where the legs joined the body. But the jacket,
because of the length and area of material used, made the trouser-clad legs look disproportionately thin.

Hewlitt apparently had been able to reduce the area of the jacket by introducing a set of false pleats
running along the spine and dividing at the tail opening; and he had used a series of strategically placed
darts to shape the garment at awkward body contours. But he had had to scrap and recut the original
trousers, making them nearly twice as wide but with a neat taper to approximately double the hoof
diameter at the bottoms. This meant redesigning the method of suspension across the back and modifying