The Dressmaker (19 page)

A sound came from deep inside Mae. It was a sound only a mother can make.

Tilly heard all of this but it was as though she were watching through a motion picture camera. She saw that the coffin was white and covered by a mountain of wreaths and that there was row after row of neat backs shuddering and bunches of tearful faces turning away from her – the Almanacs crippled together, the Beaumonts all stiff and severe and held, fat Lois blotched and scabbed and blowing her nose, her big baby Bobby crying and Nancy and Ruth clutching him. Marigold sipped from a flask of something and there was Evan, red with anger but not looking at anyone. The footballers stood in a line with their backs rigid, holding their jaws high and tight, their eyes red and brimming.

Sergeant Farrat took Tilly home after the burial and Molly rose to sit in her chair by her daughter.

The wake was an awful affair that stayed soaked in stunned rage and wretchedness. Fred and Purl stood at the bar like orphans at a bus stop, since no one felt much like drinking and the sandwiches would not go down. The McSwineys sat as one, grey-faced and stiff and shocked in their chairs. Behind them on the wall hung photographs of their cheeky boy along with the Grand Final victory flag. The team said time and time again, ‘He won it single-handed for us,’ and tried to press the flag into Edward’s crossed arms.

• • •

Barney laboured up The Hill the next day with the galah on his shoulder, the cow at his heels and the chooks pecking along behind him. He tied the cow to the fence and put the galah on the post then stood in front of her with his hat crushed in his hands. He tried to raise his head to look at her, but he couldn’t get his eyes to meet hers.

She felt sick – bile rose in the back of her throat and her body ached from crying. She was exhausted, but her mind raced with venom and hate for herself and the people of Dungatar. She’d prayed to a God she didn’t believe in to come and take her away. She looked at Barney and wished he would hurt her, or embrace her, but he just pointed at the animals and said in a high, thin voice, ‘Dad said you’ll need ’em and they need a home.’ She stood unsteadily and held out a hand to him but his mouth screwed open and he turned and stumbled away, yowling, holding his arms across his chest. Tilly felt her heart turn and squeeze in her chest and she sat down heavily on the step, her face twisted and crying.

Graham stood harnessed and waiting, the cart behind him loaded with boxes and bundles and small brown and white dogs. Edward and Mae, Elizabeth, Margaret and Mary, Barney, George, Victoria, Charles, Henry, Mary, and Charlotte holding the baby, just stood close together, like sad rag dolls leaning each other upright. They watched the caravans and railway carriages burning. First there was smoke, then flames burst with a roar and a low wall of spitting red and orange rolled through the winter grass to the edge of the tip. The fire truck wailed from behind the shire offices and drove to park at the edge of the burning pyre. Some men got out of the truck and went to stand by the McSwiney family, then shook their heads and drove away.

When Edward was satisfied he’d rendered their happy family home a crumpled shrouded black heap, the family left. They followed Graham, the first rays of morning sun on their backs. They didn’t look back, just stumbled away slow and bent to find a new place to start, their faint moans to reach at her forever.

The afternoon grew bitterly cold but still she couldn’t go back inside. The place was full of material – coloured bolts and rags, loose threads and cotton reels, needles and frayed edges, mannequins shaped like snobby old Elsbeth and canvas water-bag Gertrude, and puny Mona or putrid gossiping Lois, leathery old sticky-beak Ruth, venomous Beula. The floor was a mattress of pins, like dead pine needles under a dark plantation. She lit another cigarette and drank the last watermelon fire-water from a bottle. Her face was puffy, her eyes purple and swollen from crying. Her hair stuck out in clumps about her shoulders like strands of aloe vera leaf, and her legs and feet were bruised with cold. Deathly pale and shuddering in the smoke rising from the tip, she stared down. The town was dormant, the eye closed.

She remembered Stewart Pettyman’s eyes staring up and the sound,
crack
, the groan then another sound like a cow falling on hay. When she opened her eyes Stewart Pettyman lay in the hot summer grass with his head all twisted to the side, very suddenly. There was a smell, and blood came from between his red, sloppy lips. Liquid poo filled his shorts and crept out under his thighs.

Sergeant Farrat said to her, ‘His neck is broken. He is dead now and gone to heaven.’

Tilly shifted her gaze to the square dark silo that sat like a giant coffin beside the railway line.

T
he people of Dungatar gravitated to each other. They shook their heads, held their jaws, sighed and talked in hateful tones. Sergeant Farrat moved amongst his flock, monitoring them, listening. They had salvaged nothing of his sermon, only their continuing hatred.

‘She made him jump.’

‘She murdered him.’

‘She is cursed.’

‘She gets it from her mother.’

Very early one morning she snuck down to Pratts for matches and flour. Purl and Nancy stopped to stare as she passed, their hate piercing her heart. Faith shoved her when she saw her standing searching the shelves, and someone ran up behind her and pulled her hair. Muriel snatched the flour and money from her hand and threw them out onto the footpath. They drove up The Hill to throw rocks onto the cottage roof in the middle of the night, driving around and around, revving, calling, ‘Murderers! Witches!’

Mother and daughter stayed behind their locked door cuddling their desolation and sorrow, moving about very little. Sergeant Farrat brought them food. Molly buried toast and jam and hid boiled eggs in the folds of her blankets or shoved steamed vegetables into crannies about her chariot. On warm days flies circled her. She was silent, rising each day only to sit staring at the fire, her scarred old heart beating on and on. Tilly left her only at night to roam the plains or scout along the creek for dry gum branches to burn. They stayed together by the fire staring at the flames, and wound themselves tightly under their blankets to listen for sounds in the night’s blackness. Bitterness rested on Tilly’s soul and wore itself on her face. Her mother let her head drop and closed her eyes. People threw their rubbish into the smouldering pit so that the stench wafted up The Hill and filled the house.

L
esley swung down the deserted main street between Mona and her mother’s cousin, Una Pleasance, who was shivering. ‘Of course, I’m used to European winters. I was in Milan for many, many years,’ he said. ‘I was working with the Lippizzaners.’

Mona slipped her arm through her husband’s. ‘He taught the horses, didn’t you Lesley?’

‘And now you are in Dungatar?’ Una looked at the few shabby shops along the main street.

‘I was forced to return to Australia upon the death of my dear, dear mama. Her affairs had to be settled and just as I was on the verge of returning to Europe, I was snapped up by the Beaumonts.’

Mona nodded, ‘Snapped up, by us.’

‘But Dungatar’s hardly –’

‘Snapped up just like you, Una!’ sang Lesley and smiled sweetly at her.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘here we all are! That’s the Station Hotel – miles from the railway line,’ and he laughed nudging Una.

‘They do a lovely steak and chips,’ said Mona.

‘If you like steak and chips,’ said Lesley.

Una pointed to The Hill. ‘What’s up there?’ They stopped, looking at the smoke curling up to shroud the vine-covered walls and creep away to the plains. Smoky fingers stretched around the chimney and up into the clouds.

‘That’s where Mad Molly and Myrtle live,’ said Mona gravely.

‘Oh,’ said Una, and nodded knowingly.

‘This is Pratts Store,’ said Lesley breaking the trance. ‘The only supply outlet for miles, a gold mine! It’s got everything – the bread monopoly, the butcher, haberdashery, hardware, even veterinary products, but here comes Dungatar’s richest man now!’

Councillor Pettyman was walking towards them, smiling, his eyes on Una.

‘Good morning,’ he cried. ‘It’s the Beaumont family with my special guest.’ He grabbed Una’s hand and kissed her long white fingers.

‘We’re just giving Una a guided tour of her new home –’

‘You must allow me!’ said Evan, rubbing his hands and licking his lips, his warm breath visible in the winter air. ‘I can drive Miss Pleasance in the comfort of the shire car, after all – she is my guest.’ He looped her arm through his and spun her off towards his car. ‘We can drive along the creek to some of the outlying properties and then …’ He opened the car door and helped Una settle in the front seat, lifted his hat at Mona and Lesley left standing on the footpath then drove the new girl in town away.

‘The cheek!’ said Lesley.

• • •

Tilly sat against the wall looking down through the grey mist to the round green and grey mud-smudged oval fringed by dark cars, the supporters standing between them like caught tears. The small men washed from one end of the field to the other, black bands on their flaying arms as they grabbed at the tiny ball, the supporters howling their scorn at the opposition. She knew anger and woe propelled them. Their cries bounced off the great silo and shot up to her and out across the paddocks in the smoke.

Rain started and fell from the clouds in sheets, pelting and drenching, pounding the cars and the iron roof above her. It bashed at the windows and bent the vegetable leaves in Barney’s garden. A diesel engine groaned away from the Dungatar station, the passenger carriages empty. The cow, tethered half way down The Hill, ceased munching to listen, then turned her rump to the weather and folded her ears forward. The players stopped and stood about, blinded and confused in the grey flooded air until the rain eased, when they started playing again.

Tilly feared football defeat would send the people to her, that they would spill wet and dripping from the gateway of the oval to stream up The Hill with clenched fists for revenge blood. She waited until there was a scattered clapping from the crowd and a horn tooted. The galah bobbed, raising his crest, and lifted a claw from the veranda rail … but it was Dungatar who had lost, failed at its last chance to make the finals. The cars drove out the gate and dispersed.

She went inside where Molly sat turning the pages of a newspaper. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s only you.’

Tilly looked at her mother, her skeleton shoulders under her tattered hessian shawl. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s me
and
you; there is only you and you have only me.’

She sat down to sew but after a while she shoved the needle safely in the hem of Molly’s new dress and leaned back to rub her eyes. She gazed at Teddy’s empty seat and the wood box where he always put his boots and let her mind rest in the orange flames dancing in the stove. Molly spread the paper on the kitchen table, squinted through the bifocals perched at the end of her nose and said, ‘I need my glasses, where have you hidden them?’

Tilly reached over and turned
The Amalgamated Dungatar Winyerp Argus Gazette
the right way up. ‘Well,’ Molly said and smiled slyly, ‘they got another seamstress, from Melbourne. There’ll be trouble now, she’ll have a trail of Singer Sewing Machine men after her, roaming the countryside leaving broken hearts and hymens in their wake.’

Tilly peered over her mother’s shoulder. The one item in ‘Beula’s Grapevine’ column read, ‘High Fashion Arrives’. There was a photograph of the president, secretary and treasurer of the Dungatar Social Club – wearing creations by Tilly – smiling at a severe woman, whose middle part dissected her widow’s peak.

‘This week Dungatar welcomes Miss Una Pleasance, who has brought to us her considerable dressmaking talents. The Dungatar Social Club, on behalf of the community, welcomes Miss Pleasance and we look forward to the grand opening of her dressmaking establishment,
Le Salon
. Miss Pleasance is at present a guest of Councillor and Mrs Evan Pettyman. Her business premises will be temporarily located at their home. The grand opening will be celebrated on Friday 14th July, at 2 p.m. Ladies bring a plate.’

First thing in the morning they heard the Triumph Gloria arrive and sit idling on the lawn. Tilly crept to the back door and peeped out. Lesley sat behind the wheel and Elsbeth waited in the back seat with a hanky held to her nose. The new seamstress sat beside her, staring at the wisteria climbing the veranda posts and up and over the roof. Mona stood on the veranda, twirling a riding crop around and around in her hand. Tilly opened the door.

‘Mother says she wants … all the things you’ve got half made, mine and hers and Trudy, Muriel … Lois …’ Her voice faded.

Tilly folded her arms and leaned on the doorjamb.

Mona straightened. ‘Could we have them please?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’ Mona ran back to the car and leaned in to talk to her mother. There was a small conversation in spatting tones then Mona stepped hesitantly back to the veranda.

‘Why?’

‘Because no one’s paid me.’ Tilly slammed the door. The frail building creaked and leaned an inch closer to the ground.

That evening, there was a knock at the door. ‘It’s me,’ called Sergeant Farrat, sotto voce. When Tilly opened the door she found the sergeant standing on the veranda in black linen gaucho pants, a white Russian Cossack shirt and red quilted waistcoat with a black hat with flat brim balanced at a scandalous tilt on the side of his head. He held a white paper package and from beneath his waistcoat he produced a long brown bottle which he held high, moths fluttering about his shoulders. ‘One of Scotty’s finest,’ he said, smiling broadly.

Tilly opened the screen door.

‘Nightcap, Molly?’ asked the sergeant.

She looked at the sergeant, horrified. ‘Don’t wear them, they’re the sort of thing that’d get wrapped around your neck while you’re asleep.’

Tilly placed three chilled glasses on the table and Sergeant Farrat poured. He unwrapped the package he’d brought. ‘I have a challenge for you. I’ve been reading up on the Spanish invasion of the South Americas and I have here a costume for my collection which needs alteration.’ Sergeant Farrat stood and pressed a diminutive matador’s costume against his round form. It was bright green silk brocade, heavily beaded, bordered with elaborate gold lamé binding and tassels. ‘I thought perhaps you could improvise some inserts, similar or at least blending with the general glitter of the costume. They could be disguised quite cleverly by Dungatar’s only real creative hands, don’t you think?’