The Dressmaker (3 page)

Tooting car horns and a rousing cheer floated from the football oval where young men stood in the grandstand drinking beer. Men in hats and grey overcoats gathered near the dressing sheds, barracking, and today their wives had abandoned their knitting to watch every move the teams made. In the deserted refreshment shed, the pies burned to a cinder in the warming oven and kids squatted behind the hot-dog boiler picking the icing from the tops of the patty cakes. The crowd barked and horns blasted again. Dungatar was winning.

Down at the Station Hotel, Fred Bundle also caught the sounds floating through the grey afternoon and fetched more stools from the beer garden. Once Fred’s body had been alcohol-pickled and his skin the texture of a sodden bar cloth. The one day he’d been serving behind the bar and had opened the trap door intending to tap another keg. He reached for the torch, stepped back and vanished. He’d fallen into the cellar – a ten-foot plummet onto brick. He tapped the keg, finished his shift and closed up as usual. When he didn’t come down for bacon and eggs the next morning, Purl went up. She pulled back the blankets and saw her ex-rover’s legs were purple and swollen to the size of gum tree trunks. The doctor said he had broken both femurs in two places. Fred Bundle was a teetotaller these days.

Out in the kitchen, Purl hummed and rinsed lettuce, sliced tomatoes and buttered pieces of white high top for sandwiches. As a hostess and publican’s wife, Purl believed it was essential to be attractive. She set her bottle-blonde hair every night, and painted her fingernails and lips red and wore matching hair ribbons. She favoured pedal-pushers and stiletto scuffs with plastic flowers. Drunks removed their hats in her presence and farmers brought her fresh-skinned rabbits or home-grown marrows. The ordinary women of Dungatar curled their top lips and sneered. ‘You do your own hair don’t you Purl – I don’t mind paying for a decent set myself.’

‘They’re just jealous,’ Fred would say, pinching his wife’s bottom, so Purl stood in front of her dressing table mirror every morning, smiled at her blonde and crimson reflection, and said, ‘Jealousy’s a curse and ugliness is worse.’

The final siren blared and the rising club song carried from the oval. Fred and Purl embraced behind the bar and Sergeant Farrat paused to say, ‘Hooray.’

The siren did not reach Mr Almanac in his chemist shop. He was absorbed, shuffling through photo packages newly arrived from the developing lab in Winyerp. He studied the black and white images under the light from his open refrigerator, which held many secrets: Crooks Halibut Oil, pastes, coloured pills inside cotton-mouthed jars, creams, nostrums and purgatives, emetics, glomerulus inhibitors, potions for nooks and creases, galley pots, insecticidal oils for vermin-infested hair, stained glass jars and carboys containing fungi for female cycles or essence of animal for masculine irritations, tin oxide for boils, carbuncles, acne, styes, poultices and tubes for weeping sinus, chloroforms and salts, ointments and salines, minerals and dyes, stones, waxes and abrasives, anti-venom and deadly oxidants, milk of magnesias and acids to eat cancers, blades and needles and soluble thread, herbs and abortifacients, anti-emetics and anti-pyretics, resins and ear plugs, lubricants and devices to remove accidental objects from orifices. Mr Almanac tended the towns-folk with the contents of his refrigerator, and only Mr Almanac knew what you needed and why. (The nearest doctor was thirty miles away.) He was examining the square grey and white snapshots belonging to Faith O’Brien … Faith standing, smiling with her husband Hamish at the railway station; Faith O’Brien reclining on a blanket next to Reginald Blood’s black Ford Prefect, her blouse unbuttoned, her skirt kicked up and her slip showing.

Mr Almanac growled. ‘Sinners,’ he said, sliding the photographs back into the blue and white envelope. He reached a stiff crooked arm to the back of the refrigerator to a jar of white paste. Faith had been in, whispering to Mr Almanac that she ‘had an itch … down there,’ and now he knew her lusty husband wasn’t the cause of her discomfort. Mr Almanac unscrewed the lid and sniffed, then reached for the open tin of White Lily abrasive cleaner on the sink at his elbow. He scooped some onto his fingers then plunged them into the potion and stirred, screwed the lid back on and put the jar at the front of the top shelf.

He closed the door, reached with both arms to the edge of the fridge and grabbed it. With a small grunt the stiff old man pulled his stooped torso faintly to the left, then the right, and gathering momentum rocked his rigid body until one foot rose, the other followed and Mr Almanac turned and tripped across his dispensary, halting only when he bumped against the shop counter. All the counters and shelves in Mr Almanac’s chemist shop were bare. Everything on view was either in wire-strengthened glass cases or on high-sided benches like billiard tables so that nothing could fall and break when Mr Almanac bumped to a halt against them. Advancing Parkinson’s disease had left him curved, a mumbling question mark, forever face-down, tumbling short-stepped through his shop and across the road to his low damp home. Collision was his friend and saviour when his assistant Nancy was absent from the shop, and his customers were used to greeting only the top of his balding head, standing behind his ornate and musical copper-plated cash register. As his disease advanced so had his anger over the state of Dungatar’s footpaths and he had written to Mr Evan Pettyman, the shire president.

Mr Almanac waited, stuck and coiled against the shop counter until Nancy came. ‘Yoohoo … I’m here boss.’ She gently guided him by the elbow to the front door, pushed his hat tightly onto his bent head and wound his scarf around his neck, tying a knot at the nape to sit where his head used to belong. She curled over in front of him and looked up into his face. ‘Close game today boss, only beat ’em by eight-goals-two! There’d be a few minor injuries I’d say, but I told ’em you got gallons of liniment and crepe bandage.’

She patted the arched cervical vertebra pushing on his white coat and shuffled with him to the curb. Mrs Almanac sat in her wheelchair in the front gate opposite. A quick glance up and down the street and Nancy gave her boss a shove, and he chugged straight over the rise in the middle of the bitumen and down to Mrs Almanac who held a cushion out at arm’s length. Mr Almanac’s hat came to a soft halt deep in the cushion and he was safely home.

Out at Windswept Crest, Elsbeth Beaumont stood at her Aga in her homestead kitchen lovingly basting a roasting pork joint – her son loved the crackle. William Beaumont Junior was at the oval, laughing with the men in the change rooms, standing in the steamy air with naked blokes and the smell of sweat and stale socks, Palmolive soap and liniment. He felt easy, bold and confident among the soft ugly intimacy of the grass-stuck grazed knees, the songs, the profanity. Scotty Pullit was smiling next to William, sipping from a tin flask, springing on the balls of his feet. Scotty was fragile and crimson with a bulbous, blue-tipped nose and a wet, boiling cough from smoking a packet of Capstans a day. He’d failed both as a husband and a jockey, but had stumbled on success and popularity when he stilled some excellent watermelon firewater. His still was set up at a secret location on the creek bank. He drank most of it but sold some or gave it to Purl for food, rent and cigarettes.

‘And how about the first goal of the third quarter! Had it in the bag for certain then mate, just a question of waitin’ for the siren, all over bar the shouting …’ He laughed then coughed until he turned purple.

Fred Bundle snapped the top off the bottle with a barman’s finesse and tilted its mouth to the glass, black fluid pouring thickly. He placed the glass on the bar in front of Hamish O’Brien and picked through the coins sitting wetly on the bar cloth. Hamish stared at his Guinness, waiting for the froth to settle.

The first wave of football revellers neared, singing down the street then tumbling into the bar trailing chilled air and victory, the room now full and roaring. ‘My boys!’ cried Purl and spread her arms to them, her face alive with smiles. A young man’s profile caught her eye – most did – but this was a face from her past, and Fred had helped her bury her past. She stood, arms spread, watching the young man drink from his beer glass, the footballers singing and jostling about her. He turned to look at her, a smudge of foam sitting on his nose. Purl felt her pelvic floor contract and she steadied herself against the bar, her eyebrows crumpled together and her mouth creased down. ‘Bill?’ she said. Fred was beside her then. ‘William resembles his father rather than his mother – wouldn’t you say Purl?’ He cupped her elbow.

‘It’s William,’ said the young man and wiped the foam from his nose, ‘not a ghost.’ He smiled his father’s smile. Teddy McSwiney arrived at the bar beside him. ‘Is there a ghost of a chance we’ll get a beer, Purl?’

Purl drew in a long unsteady breath. ‘Teddy, our priceless full forward – did you win for us today?’ Teddy launched into the club song. William joined him and the crowd sang again. Purl kept a close eye on young William, who laughed readily and shouted drinks when it wasn’t his turn, trying to fit in. Fred kept a close eye on his Purly.

From the end of the bar Sergeant Farrat caught Fred’s eye and pointed to his watch. It was well after six pm. Fred gave the sergeant the thumbs-up. Purl caught the sergeant at the door as he paused and put his cap on. ‘That young Myrtle Dunnage is back I see.’

The sergeant nodded and turned to go.

‘Surely she’s not staying?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. Then he was gone and the footballers were fastening Masonite covers to the glass doors and windows – night air raid covers left over from the war. Purl went back to the bar and poured a fat foamy pot of beer, placed it neatly in front of William and smiled lovingly at him.

At his car Sergeant Farrat looked back at the pub, standing like an electric wireless in the mist, light peeping around the edges of the black-outs and the sound of sportsmen, winners and drinkers singing inside. The District Inspector was unlikely to pass through. Sergeant Farrat cruised, his wipers smearing dew across the windscreen, first down to the creek to check Scotty’s still for thieves then over the railway line towards the cemetery. Reginald Blood’s Ford Prefect was there, steamy windowed and rocking softly behind the headstones. Inside the car Reginald looked up over Faith O’Brien’s large breasts and said, ‘You’re a fine-grained and tender creature, Faith,’ and he kissed the soft beige areola around her hard nipple while her husband Hamish sat at the bar of the Station Hotel sucking on the beige foam of his pint of Guinness.

T
here was a gap in the McSwiney children after Barney, a pause, but they had got used to him and decided there wasn’t much wrong really, and started again fairly quickly. In all there were now eleven McSwiney offspring. Teddy was Mae’s firstborn, her dashing boy – cheeky, quick and canny. He ran a card game at the pub on Thursday nights and two-up on Fridays, organised the Saturday night dances, was the SP bookie, owned all the sweeps on Cup Day and was first to raffle a chook if funds were needed by anyone for anything. They said Teddy McSwiney could sell a sailor sea-water. He was Dungatar’s highly valued full forward, he was charming and nice girls loved him, but he was a McSwiney. Beula Harridene said he was just a bludger and a thief.

He was sitting on an old bus seat outside his caravan, cutting his toenails, looking up from time to time at the smoke drifting from Mad Molly’s chimney. His sisters were in the middle of the yard bobbing up and down over soap-sud sheets in an old bath tub that also served as a bathroom, a drinking trough for the horse and, in summer when the creek was low and leech-ridden, a swimming pool for the littlies. Mae McSwiney flopped some sodden sheets over the telegraph wire slung between the caravans and spread them out, moving the pet galah sideways. She was a matter-of-fact woman who wore floral mumus and a plastic flower behind her ear, round and neat with a scrubbed, freckled complexion. She took the pegs from her mouth and said to her oldest boy, ‘You remember Myrtle Dunnage? Left town as a youngster when –’

‘I remember,’ said Teddy.

‘Saw her yesterday, taking wheelbarrows full of junk down to the tip,’ said Mae.

‘You speak to her?’

‘She doesn’t want to speak to anyone.’ Mae went back to her washing.

‘Fair enough.’ Teddy held his gaze to The Hill.

‘She’s a nice-looking girl,’ said Mae, ‘but like I said, wants to keep to herself.’

‘I hear what you’re saying Mae. She crazy?’

‘Nope.’

‘But her mother is?’

‘Glad I don’t have to run food up there any more, I’m overworked as it is. You’ll be off to get us a rabbit for tea now, Teddy boy?’

Teddy stood up and hooked his thumbs in his grey twill belt loops, and inclined a little from the waist as if to walk off. He stood that way when he schemed, Mae knew.

Elizabeth and Mary wrung a sheet, coiled like fat toffee between them. Margaret took it from them and slapped the wet sheet into the wicker basket. ‘Not fricassee rabbit again Mum!’

‘Very well then Princess Margaret, we’ll see if your brother Teddy can find us a pheasant and a couple of truffles out there in the waste – or perhaps you’d like a nice piece of venison?’

‘As a matter of fact I would,’ said Margaret.

Teddy emerged from the caravan with the twenty-two slung over his shoulder. He went to the yard behind the vegie patch and caught two slimy golden ferrets, put them into a cage and set off, three tiny Jack Russells at his heels.

• • •

Molly Dunnage woke to the sound of a fire crackling nearby and the possum thumping across the ceiling overhead. She wandered out to the kitchen, balancing against the wall. The thin girl was at the stove again, stirring poison in a pot. She sat in an old chair beside the stove and the girl held a bowl of porridge out to her. She turned her head away.

‘It’s not poisoned,’ said the girl, ‘everyone else has had some.’ Molly looked about the room. No one else was there.

‘What have you done to all my friends?’

‘They ate before they left,’ said Tilly and smiled at Molly. ‘There’s just you and me now, Mum.’