Eleanor’s Dream Machine by Heather Pollitt
12 August 2020 { General Fiction }
Eleanor’s parents left her alone quite a lot. She didn’t mind this so much because she didn’t have a nice time with them when they were at home. This was mainly because of Eleanor’s mother, who seemed to dislike her. Dad was kind and loving but most of his time was taken up in pacifying her mother when her very frequent headaches, stomach pains and backache struck. ‘If only Mother could loosen up and be funny and kind like Dad’, Eleanor often mused. ‘We could be like my friends’ families who played board games and listened to comedy shows together on the radio’.
There was no TV, and Eleanor wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio. It might set one of her mother’s headaches off. However, she was taken to one of the local cinemas every Wednesday to watch whatever was showing, and she loved this. There would be two films showing, the main one referred to as ‘the big picture’. The short film had a B classification, denoting inferior quality but to Eleanor, any film was wonderful. She revelled at the sight of Debora Kerr or Doris Day or Lauren Bacall clad in sequinned evening dresses, carrying beaded bags and nonchalantly tossing fur wraps round their shoulders. The sight of Bette Davies in ‘Now Voyager’, walking down the gangplank transformed from an ugly duckling to a beautiful woman in an elegant dress and floppy brimmed hat had Eleanor in raptures.
There was danger, music, romance, and intrigue, and these celluloid strips of magic carried Eleanor mercifully away from her own seedy, drab environment. Her head was full of Hollywood films. Kitchen sink drama hadn’t arrived, as this was the fifties, and she was happy to be carried along in a daze of glamour and make-believe.
She would brush her hair up and clip it into large sausage curls on the top of her head, wrapping an old curtain round her for a pretend evening dress. And she would be forever shifting the furniture round in her bedroom to make it look as glamorous as the film stars’ dressing rooms, shown at the cinema.
Eleanor was just ten years old when she discovered her passion for mechanics. She found an old Singer sewing machine in the box room at home when her parents were out, and when she dragged it out of its corner and lifted off its heavy wooden lid with puffs and pants, she saw promise in its metal workings.
One of her aunts had once shown her the sewing machine she’d used herself for her dressmaking pursuits and Eleanor had been fascinated. Aunt Gwen had let her have a go and it had seemed easy enough, and wonderfully satisfying to see the row of stitches appear as she pedalled the treadle backward and forward. It was a bit like trying to rub your belly at the same time as patting the top of your head, but so, so much fun. And you had to be careful to keep your fingers right away from the needle, or, ouch!
It was many months after this encounter with her aunt’s machine, that Eleanor discovered the dusty Singer sewing machine in the box room, but she’d not forgotten the joy she’d had that day so her mind was driven to get this one working. She tried the treadle but then realised when the hand wheel didn’t turn, that it wasn’t connected to the hub of the big metal wheel. The rubber tubing had broken. But inside, was a wire core and so Eleanor had an idea. She crept downstairs and got Dad’s wire cutters and a few other tools and some fuse wire and took them up to what was now her own project.
It took her about twenty minutes to connect the tubing back together by twisting and joining the inner wire. In no time, the rubber tubing was in the grooves of the large iron wheel and tight enough and firm enough to do its job. Eleanor was so pleased to see and to feel the smooth shiny metal of the smaller wheel turning in her right hand as she pedalled the footplate. Now to the vital part. Now to the needle and the shuttle.
Aunt Gwen had shown Eleanor the tiny metal shuttle that shot backward and forward in co-ordination with the needle, that stabbed the cloth at chosen intervals. Yes: chosen! There was a lever that allowed the machinist to choose the length of the stitches! And another lever that allowed you to run the needle backwards! Well! Everything seemed to be working so far, but, oh the dirt and the grime! Goodness knew how long the machine had stood in that room just waiting to be used. Waiting for Eleanor to take possession of it.
She wiped the oily dirt off the parts, thinking that the build-up of fluff wouldn’t help matters and just then, she spotted a little booklet titled Singer Sewing Machine – Operating Instructions. She could hardly read what it said because the pages were all stuck together, and they were brown and stiff with age. But this didn’t deter our dynamic mechanic! She began reading about how to thread the machine and then how to reload the shuttle and to slot it back into its socket. ‘Voila!’ cried Eleanor, in imitation of her favourite teacher who was engaged to a French man. ‘Voila!’.
It wasn’t long before Eleanor had the Singer sewing machine up and running. She decided to tell her parents, and Dad was really pleased with what she’d done. ‘Not just a pretty face, my little Eleanor!’, and Eleanor was proud. From her mother it was a different story.
‘That dirty thing!’, she said, ‘And in that filthy box room! I’m not having you messing about up there, sewing machine or not!’.
‘So. Can Dad bring it down and put it in my bedroom?’ Eleanor asked, bright eyed and staring up at both parents in turn.
‘Love, it’s far too heavy, and if you really are going to do some stitching on it it’ll make a racket that’ll set one of your mother’s headaches off again. Tell you what. I’ll shift all that junk from the box room, you and I can clean it out and then you’ll have your very own sewing room’. How’ll that be?’.
‘Dad! It’ll be great! Then I can start making my own clothes. I’ll call it Maison Eleanor, and I’ll embroider my own little labels to sew inside the garments I design!’
‘You’ll get ‘design’ if you don’t get upstairs and do your homework young lady!’, said her mother, and Eleanor wondered what that really meant, because her mother said it about everything she didn’t approve of. Eleanor decided her mother didn’t approve of her in any way because she always brushed her ideas aside with her sarcastic jibes. ‘You’ll get holidays, or, ‘You’ll get new skirt’, or, ‘You’ll get staying out ‘til nine o’clock running round the streets like nobody owns you!’.
True to her intention, Eleanor did start making her own clothes. Or, rather, making clothes her own. That is, she didn’t have any material from which to make them, or patterns to guide her, so she started rummaging around for clothes that were now too small for her. She unpicked seams and pleats and restyled skirts and dresses. She made clothes for the dolls that she’d given up playing with, made curtains for her dolls’ house and cushions for her bed with the offcuts.
Eleanor began to realise that it was the deconstruction of garments that she enjoyed. This was mechanics just like when she’d got the machine going all by herself. She went to visit her aunt and came home a walking jumble sale. There were winter coats in Harris Tweed, faded evening dresses in satin with beaded trims and silk blouses with holes in them but this didn’t matter to Eleanor. Each garment was a challenge and this hobby stayed with her for the rest of her life. Faded crepe came to life as a glamorous blouse, and an enormous tent coat in cashmere and wool was reduced to a smart little three-quarter jacket that was the envy of all her friends.
As Eleanor reached her late teens and early twenties people began to describe her as stylish, and fashionable. All her girlfriends were spending on expensive garments that they could ill afford. Eleanor saved her money, and when she was twenty=five she had enough saved to pay the deposit on a small shop with living accommodation above. She bought second-hand furniture and painted it in lovely pastel shades, touching the edges with gold lacquer. She made silk curtains from a roll of fabric from the local market and stripped and varnished the floorboards to give the place a theatrical feel.
Last of all, Eleanor paid an expert sign painter to come and treat the shop front. She chose an art deco font in gold on a periwinkle blue background and there it stood for all to see. ‘Maison Eleanor- Luxury Bespoke Garments for the Discerning Woman’.
It took a little while for trade to start and then to pick up. But when it did, there was no stopping Eleanor’s enterprise, and in a few years, she employed seamstresses, cutters and finishers. Clients were coming from America, France and Italy to purchase a Maison Eleanor piece.
Eleanor herself was always the designer and her creativity gave every garment life and hope to pass on to its wearer. Her pieces were designed to speak for their vintage, being unique and bespoke.
Every evening she was driven home from the shop, or ‘salon’, as she now referred to it, in her shiny limousine. And every evening as she sipped her Moet et Chandon by the window, overlooking the river, she would say to her pet dog: ‘Well, Fabian, Mother said to me so long ago, ‘You’ll get design’, and I got it! A ta sante mon petit!’.
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