I'm not sure how I should be numbering this piece-- perhaps it should be 11.5 instead of 13 --but since I broke up my streak of working on The Tailor of Riddling Way I guess it gets a new number. This short scene is from The Tailor of Riddling Way after Tom returns home from learning that Miss Emma Loring has been found dead. Though he figures he shouldn't be worrying about making the strange gown she commissioned anymore, he can't seem to get the project out of his head, and finds himself consulting his mother's old embroidery notes wondering how he might have handled the challenge.
One thing about audio drama is that since you can only communicate information through what the audience hears, you find yourself having characters needing to tell rather than show what they're doing. It can be tough to make characters "think out loud," so to speak, without making it sound unnatural and stagey. Also, things in the book are read in the voice of the woman who wrote them, even though she's not actually there, and I hope that plays clearly. You be the judge of the job I did here.
SCENE 5
(Opening and closing of a door with a bell. Footsteps across the floor. Draping of jacket on a coat rack.)
TOM: What a sorry business. Suppose there’s no need to worry about the gown now. Perhaps that’s for the best. Who could manage a perfect copy from a newspaper clipping? Miss Loring didn’t know what she was asking for, poor thing. Still… can’t say I won’t miss the fee. And… would’ve been nice to have a real challenge to work on. Maybe I could have done it, somehow. And with satin like this... where did she find such stuff? Madame Vayon never had us work with better. But that doesn’t matter now. (Pause, then frustrated sigh.) If only I could see the back of it! I’m sure I could have copied it. Wouldn’t have been easy, but I’m sure I could have found the way. And Ma’s notes might have got me through the beadwork. Thank heaven for her old journals.
(Footsteps across the floor, sliding of a book off of a shelf. Sound of old book opening.)
TOM: Now how would she have done it?
(Pages turning.)
ABIGAIL: To my dear son Tom— in these pages I’ve tried to take down everything about the craft of needlework that I’ve learned over the course of my career. I hope that as you learn and grow in skill with your own work, you can look back on this in reference of everything I wanted to pass on to you. I know that with your talents, before long you will far surpass my own abilities, and I am only glad that I had the chance to help you grow them. This is my best legacy to you. I have spent my life making beautiful thing, but you are the most beautiful that I have ever made. From your loving mother, Abigail Barrows.
TOM: Ah, Ma. God bless you.
(Pages turning.)
ABIGAIL: To begin with your beadwork, transfer your design to the bodice with chalk, so you can brush it clean when you’ve finished. A good sketch made beforehand will help you enormously, but you always were a good sketcher. It is becoming common to affix beading by a simple running stitch, but I mean to teach you better than that. Truly fine beadwork that will last more than a few wearings must be sewn bead by bead, with as tiny stitching as you can manage. The beauty of it comes from the intricacy and delicacy of the design, so plot out the colors and placement with care, and then stitch them together such that they are aligned closely, but not crowded. I have sketched out some of my best work in this book for you to examine, in hopes that you will see what I’ve done in the past and adapt it to your own work.
TOM: Hmmm. I wonder if there’s something in here I could have used.
(Page turning.)
ABIGAIL: Instructions for beadwork in cascading whorls…
(Page turning.)
ABIGAIL: Instructions for beadwork in climbing vines…
(Page turning.)
ABIGAIL: Instructions for beadwork in the shape of lily flowers…
TOM: Why, these look like they’d be spot on. Wait a minute…
(Crinkling of paper.)
TOM: Jesus Christ. It can’t be.
(Book slams shut.)
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