One Long Thread (3 page)

5.

‘Do you miss her, Dad?' I asked soon after they had gone.

‘I love you both the same,' he said. ‘I just don't have the right to regret how things turned out. I'm sorry for you,' he said. And that was something, at least.

For our first birthday apart, Dad sent Sally a present and money for a visit but she spent the money on something else. Mum only sent me a card and that's the way it continued. It hurt thinking that she didn't care enough to think to send me something. I wouldn't have minded what it was, it needn't have been anything expensive, I just wanted something from her, to know she had been thinking of me, at least. I wrote her a letter asking why she never sent me anything and she replied,

Birthdays indulge our egos and God only needs our hearts. If I you were a grateful daughter you would think my letters were enough. I pray for your soul every day and ask God to look after you when I cannot. I'd like you to read Luke 1:52.

There's nothing you can say to something like that. Except,
sorry
.

With that letter came a pamphlet explaining the Aberdeen way. It was a fairly thick, professional publication complete with pictures of beautiful people smiling, happy, attempting to explain some of the more unusual rituals they observed. These included:

* Accepting and submitting to the authority of God and the Aberdeen Council

* Marrying within the Aberdeen community and wearing the white Aberdeen wedding dress (women, that is)

* Renouncing all technology

* Observing all rituals concerning Fast, Feast and Holy days.

It wasn't stated directly, but I was aware of an undercurrent through the literature suggesting that women were considered inferior and needed looking after by God and the Aberdeen Council. And of the twenty names listed comprising the council not one of them was a woman. It was sad to think of Mum and Sally subjecting themselves to that kind of domination. Because our dad never thought of women that way.

‘Do you understand it?' I asked Dad, showing him a few of the letters Mum had sent.

‘Some people take their religion very seriously,' he said. ‘She was getting that way before she left. I think.' He started to say something but didn't finish. He put his paper down and took his glasses from his nose. He smiled and winked at me and he looked just like the man from our childhood. ‘It's her choice, Button.'

I shrugged and smiled back. I liked the feeling of being close to him, sharing something together that didn't need speaking about. He didn't judge anyone or anything and it was one of the things I most admired about him. Dad was the ultimate pacifist. I could have brought anyone home for dinner and he'd carry on as normal while rummaging through the cutlery drawer for an extra knife and fork. He always poured me half a glass of wine for special occasions and never treated me like a child. Just a person, the same as he was and, most of the time, I loved that about him. But sometimes I wanted to feel like a child, to know that he would stand in front of me while waves crashed towards us or arrows came at us. It should have been enough that he would take my hand, equal to equal, and we would face, whatever came, together. Yet I wanted him to climb a fence and sit on it, to raise a flag, hang a banner and stand for something. Anything. Leaving Mum was one of his few defining moments; a time he chose a road for himself.

At first I wondered whether he missed Sally the way I did and whether Sally missed me. But I tucked those thoughts down, worked hard at school and filled my sketchbook with dress designs and matching accessories. Drawing by torchlight under the covers late into the night. Hiding my habit for no other reason than it felt good to do it.

‘At least I have you, though,' Dad said, placing his glasses back on his nose and adjusting the paper. ‘How 'bout you make us a cup of tea, Button?' he said and I thought the warmth of an Earl Grey with lemon might just make me feel better. For a while.

6.

At first I imagined the kinds of wedding dresses my mum was sewing in Darwin. I'd flip through
Beautiful Brides
or
Vogue
or
Woman's Day
and cut out photographs of wedding gowns and stick them inside my scrapbook. I imagined these were the creations Mum laboured over. I conjured up the sound of her sewing machine grinding as she sped the needle through the cloth. She'd sew silk flowers – I'd been studying how to make these myself – and stitch them to bodices and hemlines. For the groom she would stitch a miniature flower for the edge of his pocket handkerchief and it would only be the likes of us – seamstresses – that would appreciate the detail. I imagined us sitting in the back row of churches watching brides walk down the aisle in our gowns. Mum would catch sight of a tiny flaw beside the back seam near the zipper – it would have happened after delivery – and we'd whisper what a shame it was we weren't called to the vestry before the service. What possibilities existed in us being together.

Mum had always been handy with a sewing machine and fabric, though she was more suited towards practical, no nonsense projects. On occasion she'd make us matching smocked frocks or dressing gowns but more often than not she resorted to the sewing machine for the purposes of mending skirts or shirts, pants or socks that were otherwise perfectly adequate. She would sew costumes for school plays and Sally's ballet recitals – primary school only – though she always used a pattern and followed each and every instruction. Including tacking seams before sewing.

When I was old enough to use the sewing machine I found patterns and tacking – even pinning, sometimes – a waste of time and creative energy. I preferred to work a garment from an idea, pinning and tucking, so to speak, in my mind as I went along. Mum couldn't stand this way of sewing and it was all she could do not to rip the project from my hands and finish it herself.

‘You'll only waste good fabric that way,' she'd say. ‘You'll save yourself time in the long run.'

And she was right. I did waste fabric. I ruined as many outfits as I finished. But those that made it through from first cut to final fit were worth it all.

‘It doesn't look like anything like this,' Mum would say, looking at the pattern picture and then my sketches. ‘It doesn't even look like anything I've seen before.'

But that was precisely the point.

By the time I had my first visit with Mum and Sally I had almost convinced myself that my fantasy was true. When I discovered the kinds of wedding dresses Mum made – and for what purpose – I wanted to catch the first plane back home to Melbourne. Every bride in the Aberdeen wore the same style; white A-line dress; neck-to-floor.

Sally told me not to be so melodramatic. ‘Get a life and grow up, kid.'

It seemed like a decade since we'd turned thirteen. Together in Melbourne with a complete family. Twins with dreams. A silk moth with two wings.

The Sunday before I flew back home we went to an Aberdeen wedding. Mum said she didn't understand everything about this new religion yet but she wanted to. She said she'd discovered what it meant to be happy, since coming there. That, for the first time in her life, she thought she might actually have found the place she belonged. I was happy for her.

It helped that the Aberdeen pastor, Brother Daniel, said, ‘Girls, God has blessed us by sending us your mother. One door closes and a better one opens. We think of her as one of the family already.'

I found him slightly creepy with his oversized smile and too perfect teeth. In fact, I found the whole thing was all a bit much and I was glad when the bride walked out of the church into the Darwin heat. No matter it was over 39 degrees and 80 per cent humidity, that bride wore long sleeves and her long hair flowing over her shoulders. Her dress was ruined with two wet patches under her armpits but I seemed to be the only one who noticed. Mum had tears in her eyes. Sally smiled, vacantly, like she was wearing a mask. In that moment I missed Dad so much it hurt.

Mum's house was a small fibro box. The tiny kitchen took up one corner of the main living area. There were two bedrooms and a small enclosed room downstairs which was Mum's sewing room.

On my visits I slept in the sewing room, looking up at dresses and pieces of dresses draped on hangers from the roof all around the room. The heat was like a parasite eating me alive and at nights I could hardly sleep. I'd lie on top of a thin cotton sheet in my underwear, arms and legs spread so that no part of my skin touched. I'd splay my toes and my fingers and wait for the oscillating fan to complete its rotation and blow cool air across my body.

The walls were made of besser blocks slapped over with white paint, the concrete floor was white. God knows why. Two days into my first visit I wanted to tear the dresses from their hangers and throw coloured paint bombs around the room. Too much white can give a girl a headache.

At first, when the separation was new, I flew to Darwin every school holidays. Dad always had to pay because Mum insisted she couldn't afford it. Dad paid without complaint and I think it was his way of taking responsibility for the separation. But after those first few years my visits went from every holiday to once a year. Just six weeks over Christmas when Dad would fly to Phuket or Paris or Bali for a well-deserved holiday of his own.

7.

I hold Dad, and his wall-to-wall collection of black and white musicals, responsible for my fascination with clothes. While we were companions, together, on the couch with bowls of popcorn and cold lemonade, he hummed happy and familiar tunes enjoying the grandeur and music, and I fell in love, slowly and deeply, with fashion. We spent many a Sunday afternoon or Friday night in the company of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland and Lauren Bacall.

There is something about movies made before the Technicolor era that enhance the fashion. Without colour the fabrics become more alive through their subtleties, their movements and textures, the way they hug and cling and flute around the female form. They are made more sensual with their feathers and sequins, small pillbox hats with tulle, satin gloves and beautifully tailored lines. Everything seems designed to flatter and worship the female figure.

Fashion designers and the industry are like my version of royalty. Or Hollywood superstars. Colette Dinnigan, Morrissey and Jenny Kee, not to mention Sass and Bide and Alex Perry, are my idea of gods. Among the designs and sketches in my scrapbook I've pasted clippings, pictures and information I've collected about them from newspapers, books and the internet.

Every week I'd flip through magazines to see the latest designs in full-colour gloss, imagining what it might be like to see those models and mannequins wearing my designs one day.

I had never been one of those girls who loved dressing up in frills and heels, I always wanted to be the one who created the dresses. Even when we were little I would find things around the house and dress Sally up, and she'd walk the length of the hall modelling an evening gown of scarves and kitchen-curtain lace, teetering in a pair of Mum's shoes.

Pru Acton – she's an Australian icon – is my hero. In the sixties, when she was just twenty-one, she had her own business in Flinders Lane selling to Australia and New Zealand. She was the first Australian fashion designer to show her range in New York.

And then there's the legacy of Molly Goodweather who set the Australian fashion scene ablaze in her day, establishing one of Australia's earliest and most enduring fashion labels, Indue. Hers isn't a name you hear very often anymore, she's not as famous as Pru Acton, but women in the fashion business owe her a great debt. She crashed her way through the male-dominated industry of the thirties. She even had a brief stint in Paris. Molly Goodweather is Australia's Coco Chanel or Valentino – if not quite as famous – and, like Chanel, she shunned marriage. Scandalously, Molly Goodweather even went on to raise a son on her own.

Some nights I'd flip through my scrapbook then close the cover and hold it to my chest before going to sleep. Inside those pages were the people I most admired and looked up to in the world. At times, seeing their faces or reading about their accomplishments beside my own sketches and rough ideas, gave me hope enough to think it was possible I might be like them one day.

It was only five hours a week but working for Mr Grandy at Fashion Fabrics never felt like work. I loved the smell that a hundred bolts of fabric produced in the small room in Flinders Lane.

I started working there soon after Sally and Mum left for Darwin. At first, Mr Grandy had me there to look after the cash register and manage the simpler customer requests while he took time from the front counter to deal with administration. He'd manage the stocktakes, the ordering and delivery of fabrics and meeting with representatives selling everything from ribbons and lace to buttons and silk embellishments.

In the holidays – if I wasn't visiting Mum – Mr Grandy had me working full-day shifts. I felt like I owed Dad some of the money I earned in those weeks but he insisted the fruits of my labour were all my own. So I'd bring home something expensive and decadent on Friday nights for dessert. A gateaux or flan from Chevalier's Patisserie. And he'd pour me a small glass of sherry to have with coffee and dessert in front of a Friday night black-and-white video.

‘That Mr Grandy has you over a barrel,' Dad would say, knowing I invested most of what I earned straight back into Mr Grandy's pockets. I was given ten per cent discount on anything I bought from the shop but usually that meant I rewarded myself by buying a more expensive fabric.

I had built up a considerable collection of fabrics and buttons, lace strands and fringing. I could never just buy what I needed for any one project and I carried Mum's voice around in my head,
Why do you need that packet full of sequins? The pattern doesn't call for sequins of any kind.
But I liked building up my own collection. Sometimes I don't know what I'll need until I need it. And I won't know what I need until I'm in the middle of any one project. I'll sketch out a basic design for a skirt and cut the pattern pieces from a plain cotton drill. And something in the cutting of it triggers an idea and I'll rummage through what I have, pull the fabric to the left, lift it up and tuck it in, hem it with a tartan bias binding which I fold back and stitch to the skirt as a panel. Sometimes I think Mr Grandy knows me better than anyone. ‘You, Miss Ruby Moon, are a work in progress.'

I consider my sewing machine and overlocker to be the essentials – all of my initial earnings went on buying them. I'd studied brands and prices, flipping through brochures and leaflets, considering features and options, before settling for a middle-of-the-road priced machine of a reputable brand. I desperately wanted a mannequin, but there was no point having a mannequin with no fabric and no money for fabric. So I decided to invest in my textile collection first.

I never discussed my working life with Dad. Not in any great detail. I think he saw it as a suitably consuming hobby and, so long as I wasn't doing drugs or lusting after boys, it was fine. It was a surprise at Christmas, that first year we were on our own together, to find a mannequin underneath the tree. Not any mannequin, the best brand, top of the range.

During the Christmas break, I converted Sally's old room into my sewing room. I set the mannequin to my own measurements and between Christmas and New Year I sewed a second blue satin dress. It wasn't exactly the same as the one I had made for Sally to go to Matthew Grayson's formal – nothing I ever make is – but it is what I would have made Sally then, if she had asked. And was there to wear it.

If I was feeling lonely I would put that second dress on the mannequin and picture her swirling those frills and filling it with life. Imagining she had never sold the first one I had made her. And had never left.

Just after my sixteenth birthday, Mr Grandy said, ‘Come and look at this, Ruby,' as he cast his eyes over the latest delivery of fabrics. He rested his glasses on the tip of his nose, his silver neck chain that was linked to the arms swinging. He brought his hand up under a red silk and moved it closer towards himself. He shook his head quickly and made a clicking noise in the back of his throat and I knew he was impressed. He moved it towards me and I ran my fingers along the surface, tracing the silver-grey embossing that formed a pattern covering the silk.

‘Beautiful,' he said. It's the highest compliment Mr Grandy can bestow. ‘Beautiful.'

I heard the doorbell tinkling behind us and glanced over my shoulder but Mr Grandy continued to hold the fabric out for my inspection.

‘You will be wanting some of this, Ruby,' he said and I nodded. He knew me too well. But I was mentally calculating the price of this latest beauty and how many hours I would have to put in for just a metre. Mr Grandy shook his head again and removed his glasses.

I put Mr Grandy's age to be somewhere in his mid fifties, though I don't know for sure. He is short and eccentric looking, a neat man with evenly clipped grey whiskers. Though he is generous and open-minded, he dresses in plain grey pants, uninspiring buttoned shirts and grey cardigans. He seems so comfortably at odds with himself. It's not often I regard him in this way anymore. Having known him for four years, his appearance almost disappears and his personality is more reflected in the glow of the silks he imports or the sometimes garish window displays he installs with sequinned bodices and checkerboard skirts. He says the idea is to attract attention with window displays, let the customers know you have something unique on offer. It is not Mr Grandy's window displays that bring customers through his door, rather his reputation maintained over three generations in the fabric business.

The woman entering through the door waved. Her mouth puckered into a familiar smile and I waved back. Mrs Pratson was sewing entire bridal party outfits for her daughter's wedding. She pointed to the far corner of the shop that held the embellishments, lace embroidered doilies, pearls and beads. I watched her move towards the selection and caught Mr Grandy walking back into his office. He saw me and made a face through the glass, holding the telephone receiver to his ear. He moved his head from side to side and formed his hand into a talking mouth and I laughed, knowing he'd picked up the phone to find his mother prattling on the other end, presumably to tell him how much the rising price of bread and milk was a disgrace to a country she had supported through a lifetime of taxes and working her fingers to the bone. Mr Grandy suffers these attacks daily, sometimes twice daily, though I have never heard him speak to her in anything but an understanding voice. He shares his rebellion with me, through hand signs and head gestures. On occasion I feel privileged.

‘Ruby,' Mrs Pratson called in a voice soft as lavender. ‘I can't possibly decide between these.' She held an assortment of pearls and beads in her hands for me to see as I walked over to her.

‘I'll need a little more information than that,' I said kindly and Mrs Pratson delivered the beads into my palms and began describing the bridesmaid's dress as if it were on her body. She began at her shoulders describing the pale blue silk straps that would balance a v-shaped bodice of the same colour. The skirt would fall from a diagonally cut bodice sloping from the waist on the left side and the right hip. She finished with a flourish of hand strokes from her hips to the floor to indicate the fall of fabric, gathered and full. She placed her hands over her breast. ‘The detail goes here,' she said, pointing to the beads in my hand. They were all pearl-white, four different sizes, and I tried to visualise the dress and wondered whether the beads would be sewn in clusters or scattered across the fabric.

I turned towards the counter and motioned for her to follow me. Placing the beads in a small dish, I took a pad of paper and pencil and began to sketch the dress she had described.

‘Yes,' she said, leaning over the counter in her excitement. I paused to tuck my hair – which had grown too long – behind my ears and blew on the paper. I finished the sketch – it was only rough – and she clasped her hands to her throat and I looked up to find her eyes blurring with tears. ‘Exactly,' she said, her hands making flurried movements across her eyes.

I couldn't help myself and smiled. I turned the sketch to face her and pointed to the bodice. ‘If you shape the bodice like this, in a “V”,' I said, ‘then you could follow the shape with clusters of different sized beads.' She stared at the sketch. ‘Anyway, that's what I'd do.'

She looked up at me, nodding. ‘Perfect. Ruby, you are a wonder. Mr Grandy,' she said, turning to see him arriving behind the counter, ‘Ruby is amazing.'

I felt myself blushing. I wasn't comfortable with her praise and wished I hadn't gone so far as to sketch the dress.

‘It's not a very good drawing,' I said, trying to minimise the fuss.

Mr Grandy placed his glasses on his nose and inspected the sketch. He looked up, nodding. ‘We had better see photographs of this dress, Lola.'

‘You'll be sorry you asked,' she replied, picking the sketch up from the counter and moving back to the bead section.

It took her half an hour to count out the exact number of beads she estimated would be needed to cover each of the three bodices of the three dresses for the bridal party.

After the wedding Mrs Pratson arrived with an album of photographs and a teacake from Bloom's Bakery to share. Over coffee and cake, Mr Grandy chose five photographs he wanted to borrow for the window. ‘I wonder,' he said, ‘would it be possible to borrow one of the dresses for a few weeks?'

‘My dress in the front window?' she said, misting up. Mrs Pratson didn't seem the kind of woman uncomfortable with her own emotion. She produced a handkerchief from her purse and blew her nose. ‘I'd be honoured,' she said. ‘And, if you like, you could have Mabel's dress, too.'

Mabel was the bride.

For three weeks the front window of Mr Grandy's fabric shop was filled with five mannequins wearing the dresses sewn by Mrs Pratson for each of the three bridesmaids, the bride and the flower girl. I believe we personally met each friend, relative and acquaintance of the Pratsons.

Fastened to the glass was a sign typed and printed on pink card.
From design to dress, we have everything you need.

My sketch was Blu-tacked at the bottom of the sign with an additional note:
Need a fresh design? Want a pattern altered? Ask Ruby.

Mr Grandy charged a flat fee of $20 for my design service, which he split with me, fifty-fifty.

I had never given any thought to what Dad might want to do with his future. It seems silly, but it just never occurred to me that Dad would be interested in meeting someone else. I suppose it was because Dad was so private with his thoughts and emotions it was easy to mistake that quietness for disinterest. I'd become used to the way our family had accommodated my parents' separation. It was neat, if not perfect. One parent with one child each was fair and balanced. Until Dad met Amona.

Dad had broached the subject with me a few weeks before her first visit, mentioning he had someone he wanted to invite over for tea, but hedging any details about who she was. My mind raced through possibilities and eventualities before that first dinner. Dating, marriage, children? (I focused on that last thought to make myself feel as awful as I possibly could.) Though I said nothing to Dad, just mumbled something about how fun it would be to have another woman in the house. I knew saying that would please him. And it did.