The Dressmaker (20 page)

‘I see there’s a new seamstress in town,’ said Tilly.

Sergeant Farrat shrugged, ‘I doubt she’s travelled, or received any sophisticated training.’ He looked down at his shiny green outfit, ‘But we’ll see – at the fund-raising festival.’ He looked back up at her expectantly, but she merely raised an eyebrow. Sergeant Farrat continued, ‘The Social Club have organised it, there’ll be a gymkhana and a bridge competition during the day with refreshments of course … and a concert – recitals and poetry. Winyerp and Itheca are participating … there will be prizes too. It’s in this week’s paper, and Pratts’ window.’

Tilly reached to feel the beading on the matador’s costume. She smiled. Sergeant Farrat beamed down at her, ‘I knew a bit of needlework would lift your spirits.’ He sat down in the old armchair by the fire, leaned back and put his leather slippers up on Teddy’s wood box.

‘Yes,’ she said, and wondered how her teachers in Paris – Balmain, Balenciaga, Dior – would react at the sight of Sergeant Farrat sailing down a catwalk sparkling in his green matador’s costume.

‘Poetry and recital you say?’ Tilly swallowed heavily from her glass.

‘Very cultural,’ said the sergeant.

W
illiam was slumped in a battered deckchair on what was now called ‘the back patio’, formerly the porch. His heavily pregnant wife sat inside, filing her nails, the telephone caught in the fatty folds of her chins and shoulder, ‘… well I said to Elsbeth today that there’s no hope at all of getting any of our mending back, lunacy is hereditary you know – Molly most likely murdered someone before she came here so Lord knows what they get up to in that slum on that hill … Beula’s seen her milking the cow and she sneaks along the creek to steal dead wood, like a peasant, in broad daylight! Doesn’t look the least bit guilty, Elsbeth and I were just saying the other day, thank heavens we’ve got Una …’

‘Yes,’ muttered William, ‘most important.’ He reached under his chair for the whisky bottle, slopped a generous amount into the thick glass, held it up to his eye and viewed the horse jumps in the front paddock through the amber liquid. Inside his wife talked on. ‘I’ll get William’s cheque book but I really shouldn’t have a new wardrobe until after the baby … must dash, here’s Lesley with the car, see you there.’

William waited until the scurrying heels had ceased and the front door slammed. He sighed, drained his whisky, refilled the glass, banged his pipe against the wooden armrest and reached for his tobacco.

Una Pleasance stood at Marigold’s front door wearing a navy A-line with matching pumps featuring a striped bow at the toes.

‘Please remove your shoes,’ she said to the arriving guests before they walked on Marigold’s bright, white floor.

Beula cruised the parlour, peering at photos, searching for dust on the skirting boards and picture rails. ‘What an unusual sideboard,’ she said, opening the top drawer.

‘It’s antique – my grandmother’s,’ said Marigold, worrying Beula would leave fingerprints on her polish.

‘I chucked all my grandmother’s old junk out,’ said Beula.

Just then Lois lumbered past pushing Mrs Almanac in her wheelchair: there were bindis in the tyres and oil traces on the axle. Marigold shuddered, and ran to her room, grabbed a Bex powder sachet, flung back her head and opened her mouth. She winced as the powder slid from its paper cradle onto her tongue, then reached for the tonic bottle on the bedside table, unscrewed the cap and sucked. Just then Beula barged in. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘your nerves again is it?’

She smiled and backed out. Marigold put her hand to her neck rash and took another long swig, then popped two tin oxide tablets onto her tongue just for good measure. In the parlour, Beula selected the chair in the corner for a prime view and sat with her chin tucked down, her arms folded over her white blouse and her skinny legs under her kilt. The rest of the ladies sat on plastic-covered sitting room chairs sipping tea from cups that tasted faintly of ammonia, tsk-tsking at the offered cream cakes. When Lois landed on the couch next to Ruth Dimm stale air billowed, and Ruth pressed a hanky to her nose and moved to stand by the door. Then Muriel Pratt caused a stir when she arrived wearing a frock made by ‘that witch … just to show you what we’re used to,’ she said to Una, who looked closely at it then went to stand next to her display.

For the opening of
Le Salon
, Una had provided a sample of her work. A mannequin stood in the corner wearing a button-through seersucker peasant floral frock with a flounce-collared neckline and small puffed sleeves. The mannequin wore vinyl Mexican moccasins to match and a small straw bonnet. It was an outfit straight from Rockmans of Bourke Street catering for the ‘not-so-slim figure’.

When Purl arrived she dumped a concave sponge on the table and said, ‘Lovely day,’ then turned to Una and looked her up and down. ‘Get sick of Evan or Marigold, you just come and camp at the pub.’ She lit a Turf filter tip and, looking about her for an ashtray, spotted the mannequin in the corner. ‘That one of the first things you made back at sewing school, is it?’ she asked with interest.

Beula turned to the Beaumonts standing together by the window like a grim wedding photograph from 1893, and said loudly, ‘My you’re big Ger, I mean Trudy. When
exactly
are you due?’ Mona offered the cake plate around again. Soon everyone’s saucer was crammed with thick bricks of lemon slice, hedgehog, cinnamon tea cake and pink cream lamingtons, and they were picking the crumbs and coconut flakes from their bosoms.

When Marigold stepped red-faced and shaking back into the crowded room, Mona handed her a cup of tea with a cream scone on the saucer. Nancy marched through the door behind her, bumping Marigold and sending her cup and saucer splashing onto the carpet. Marigold collapsed, her face resting in the tea and cream puddle, the two fluffy pods of scone dough resting at her ears. The clucking, floral women assisted her to bed, and when finally they returned, Elsbeth stepped to the table, clapped loudly and began the formal proceedings. ‘We welcome Una to Dungatar and wish to say –’

At that moment Trudy bellowed like a distressed cow and doubled over. There was a noise like a water bag bursting. Pink, steamy fluid flowed from her skirts and a circle of carpet around her feet darkened. Her belly was lurching as if the devil himself was ripping at her womb with his hot poker. She folded down on all fours, yelling. Purl finshed her tea in one swallow, grabbed her sponge and left hastily. Lesley fainted and Lois grabbed his ankles and dragged him outside. Mona watched her sister-in-law labouring at her feet. She put her hand over her mouth and ran outside, retching.

Elsbeth turned crimson and cried, ‘Get the doctor!’

‘We haven’t got a doctor,’ said Beula.

‘Get someone!’ She knelt beside Trudy. ‘Stop making a scene,’ she said. Trudy bellowed again.

Elsbeth yelled, ‘SHUT UP, you stupid grocer’s girl. It’s just the baby.’

Lesley lay on the lawn, flat on his back with Lois hosing him down. His toupée had washed off and lay like a discarded scrotum on the grass by his bald head. Mona stalled the Triumph Gloria three times before lurching up onto the nature strip, shattering Marigold’s front fence and roaring away with the hand brake burning, the front fender left behind, swinging from a denuded fence post. Just then Purl jogged back around the corner calling, ‘He’s coming, he’s coming.’

Lois called to Una. ‘He’s coming,’ and Una called to Elsbeth, ‘He’s coming.’

Trudy yelled and howled.

Elsbeth shrieked, ‘Stop screaming.’

Through clenched teeth between contractions Trudy growled, ‘This is all your son’s fault, you old witch. Now get away from me or I’ll tell everyone what you’re really like!’

Twenty minutes into the labour Felicity-Joy Elsbeth Beaumont shot from her mother’s slimy hirsute thighs into the bright afternoon and landed just beside Marigold’s sterilised towels with Mr Almanac standing in distant attendance.

Beula Harridene leaned close to Lois. ‘She’s only been married eight months.’

When Evan got home that evening he found his nature strip ploughed, his front fence demolished, all the doors and windows open and an odd smell permeating the house. There was a large stain on the carpet and, in the middle of it, a pile of soiled towels. On top of the towels was a fly-blown lump of afterbirth, like liver in aspic. Marigold, fully clothed, was unconscious in bed.

T
hree women from Winyerp stood at Tilly’s gateposts, tiny flakes of ash from the burning tip settling on their hats and shoulders. They were admiring the garden. The wisteria was in full bloom, the house dripping with pendulous, violet flower sprays. Thick threads of myrtle crept around the corner, through the wisteria and across the veranda, netting the boards with shiny green leaves and bright white flowers. Red, white and blue rhododendron trumpets sprang up against the walls and massive oleanders – cerise and crimson – stood at each corner of the house. Pink daphne bushes were dotted about and foxgloves waved like people saying farewell from a boat deck. Hydrangea, jasmine and delphinium clouded together around the tank stand and a tall carpet of lily of the valley marched out from the shade. French marigold bushes, squatting like sentries, marked the boundary where a fence once stood. The air was heavy, the garden’s sweet perfume mingling with the acrid smoke and the stink of burning rubbish. A vegetable garden faced south: shiny green and white spinach leaves creaked against each other in the breeze while fuzzy carrot-tops sided against straight, pale garlic stalks and onions, and bunches of rhubarb burst and tumbled against the privet hedge, which contained the garden entirely. Bunches of herb bushes lined the outside edge of the hedge.

Molly opened the door and called, ‘There’s a bunch of old stools from out at fart hill trespassing out here.’

Tilly arrived behind her, ‘Can I help you?’

‘Your garden …’ said an older woman. ‘Why, Spring isn’t even here.’

‘Almost,’ said Tilly. ‘The ash is very good and we get the sun up here.’

A pretty woman with a baby on her hip turned to look down at the Tip. ‘Why doesn’t the council do something about the fire?’

‘They’re trying to smoke us out,’ said Molly. ‘They won’t though, we’re used to being badly treated.’

‘What can I do for you?’ asked Tilly.

‘We were wondering if you were still seamstressing?’

‘We are,’ said Molly, ‘but it’ll cost you.’

Tilly smiled and put her hand over her mother’s mouth. ‘What would you like?’

‘Well, a christening gown …’

‘Some day wear …’

‘… and a new ball gown would be nice, if you’re … if it’s at all possible.’

Molly shoved Tilly’s hand away, pulling a measuring tape from within her blankets, and said, ‘Yes – now take your clothes off.’

Again Molly woke to the sound of pinking-shears crunching through material on the wooden table, and when she got to the kitchen she found no porridge waiting, only Tilly bent over her sewing machine. On the floor about her feet lay scraps and off-cuts from satin velour au sabre, wool crepe and bouclé, silk faille, shot pink and green silk taffeta, all perfect to decorate her chair with. The small house buzzed with the dull whirr and thudding of the Singer and the scissors rattled on the table when Tilly let them go.

Late one afternoon Molly sat on the veranda watching the sun draw in its last rays. A mere breath after the last tentacle of light had been pulled below the horizon, a skinny woman marched up The Hill towards her hauling two suitcases. Molly scrutinised the severe woman’s widow’s peak, the mole above her dark lipstick. Ash settled on the tips of the pin-point nipples pressing against her sweater and the pencil-line skirt she wore stretched over her hip bones. Finally she spoke. ‘Is Tilly here?’

‘Know Tilly do you?’

‘Not really.’

‘Heard about her though?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Figures.’ Molly turned her wheelchair to the screen door. ‘Tilly – Gloria Swanson has come to stay,’ she called.

Una’s hand went to her throat and she looked afraid. The veranda light flicked on.

‘We saw
Sunset Boulevard
earlier this year,’ said Tilly from behind the screen door. She had a tea towel flung over her shoulder and a vegetable masher in her hands.

‘I’m Una Pleasance,’ said the woman.

Tilly said nothing.

‘I’m the –’

‘Yes,’ said Tilly.

‘I’ll get to the point. I’m afraid I’m rather inundated and need some sewing done for me.’

‘Sewing?’

Una paused. ‘Mending mostly, hems, zips, darts to alter. It’s all very simple.’

‘Well then I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake,’ said Tilly. ‘I’m a qualified tailoress and dressmaker. You just need someone handy with a needle and thread.’ She closed the door.

‘I’ll pay you,’ called Una.

But Tilly was gone and Una was left on the veranda in the yellow light with a few moths and the sound of night-crickets chirping and frogs croaking.

‘Oh,’ said Molly, beaming up at her, ‘that’s very good, it worked very well in the film too, the way you open your eyes, bare your teeth and curl your top lip like that. It suits you.’

• • •

Mrs Flynt from Winyerp stood in front of Tilly’s mirror admiring her new outfit – a white silk satin jumpsuit with flock printed roses. ‘It’s so … so … it’s marvellous,’ she said, ‘just marvellous. I bet noone else is game to wear one of these.’

‘It suits you,’ said Tilly. ‘I hear there’s to be a concert?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Flynt, ‘poetry and recitals. Mrs Beaumont has been teaching elocution – wants to show off. She’s determined to beat us at bridge as well.’

‘Nothing like a bit of one-upmanship,’ said Tilly. ‘You should challenge her to a bit of singing and dancing as well.’

‘We’re not much good at either, I’m afraid.’

‘What about a play then? – best actress, best set design, best costume …’ suggested Tilly.

Mrs Flynt’s face lit up. ‘A play.’ She opened her purse to pay.

Tilly handed her the bill. ‘Plays are such fun to put on. They bring out the best and worst in people, don’t you think?’