Rosalie Ham - The Dressmaker

The next day was still and the low clouds sat like lemon butter on toast, keeping the earth warm. Irma Almanac sat on her back porch watching the creek roll away, carrying traces of spring with it. Tilly pushed her mother along the creek bank towards her.

‘How are you today?’

‘There’s rain coming,’ Irma replied, ‘only enough to settle the dust though.’ The two women sat together on the porch while Tilly made tea. Irma and Molly chatted, carefully avoiding the tender topics they shared – absent babies, brutal men. They talked instead about the rabbit plague, the proposed vaccination for whooping cough, communism and the need to drain kidney beans before and after boiling and before they go into soup because of possible poisoning. Tilly placed some cakes in front of Irma.

‘Speaking of poison …’ muttered Molly.

‘I made you some special cakes,’ said Tilly.

Irma picked one up in her swollen, lumpy fingers and tasted it. ‘Unusual,’ she said.

‘Ever eaten anything Lois Pickett’s made?’

‘I believe I have.’

‘You should be right then,’ said Molly.

Irma chewed and swallowed. ‘Tell me, why did a beautiful and clever girl like you come back here?’

‘Why not?’

They left well before lunch. Irma felt light and pleased and was sharply conscious of the day’s details – the quiet sky and the creek smell, rotting cumbungi and mud – and the warmth of her buffalo grass lawn, mosquitos singing and a faint breeze moving her hair about her ears. She could hear her bones scraping inside her body but they no longer hurt and the aching had stopped. She was eating another cake when Nancy popped her head around the door. ‘Here you are, eh?’ Irma jumped, then stiffened to wait for the rush of red hot pain to take her breath away, but it didn’t come. Nancy was cross, her brow creased, her hands on her hips. Behind her, Mr Almanac’s bald dome taxied slowly through the door frame like the nose of a DC3. Irma giggled.

‘You wasn’t out the front to stop Mr A here so he’d have gone bang into the front door if I hadn’t rushed over.’ Nancy patted Mr A’s head.

Tears were streaming down Irma’s face and her buckled old body was jigging with laughter. ‘I’ll just leave it open in future,’ she said and almost whooped and slapped her thigh.

Mr Almanac fell into his chair like a rake falling onto a barrow. ‘You’re a fool,’ he said.

‘Right then, I’ll leave you to it,’ said Nancy and swaggered out.

‘Those Dunnage women have been here,’ muttered Mr Almanac.

‘Yes,’ said Irma cheerfully, ‘young Myrtle took my frocks away. She’s going to put bigger buttons on them, easier for me to manage.’

‘She can never make up for it,’ he said.

‘She was only a child –’

‘You don’t know anything,’ he said.

Irma looked at her husband, sitting with his face bowed close to the table, his features all hanging like teats on a breeding bitch. She started to laugh again.

That week Teddy McSwiney called up to The Hill three more times. On his first visit he brought yabbies and fresh eggs that Mae had just collected, ‘She said if you ever need any, just sing out.’ Tilly was relieved, but still found urgent work to do in the garden and left him and mad Molly to eat the yabbies – freshly caught, cooked, peeled, wrapped in lettuce and sprinkled with homemade lemon vinegar. He left her share of yabbies in the refrigerator. She ate them late that night before bed, licking the juice from the plate before putting it in the sink.

On the second occasion, Teddy arrived with two Murray cod fillets marinated in a secret sauce and sprinkled with fresh thyme. Tilly went to work on her vegetable patch but the smell of frying cod brought her inside. The fish melted over their tingling tastebuds and when there was nothing left on their plates, Tilly and Molly put down their fish knife and fork side by side and gazed at the empty plates. Tilly said coolly, ‘That was delicious.’

Molly burped and said, ‘That’s better. You shouldn’t be rude to him, his mother saved my life.’

‘His mother left food Mrs Almanac made. I saved your life.’

‘He’s a kind young man and he’d like to take you to the dance,’ said Molly and blinked fetchingly at him. He smiled graciously at Molly and raised his glass.

‘I don’t want to go,’ said Tilly and took the plates to the sink.

‘That’s right, stay here and torture me, get under my feet, make sure I don’t go for help. It’s my house you know.’

‘Not going.’

‘Not important,’ said Teddy, ‘she’ll only upset my regular partners … and everybody else.’ He watched Tilly’s shoulders stiffen.

Molly sulked for two days. She didn’t look at Tilly and she wouldn’t eat. She woke Tilly three times in one night to say, ‘I’ve wet my bed.’ Tilly changed the sheets. When she came into the kitchen on the third afternoon with a basket full of dry sheets Molly rolled swiftly at her, scraping a deep gash across her shin with the sharp edge of the footrest.

Tilly said, ‘I’m still not going dancing.’

• • •

He saw her through binoculars as she sat reading on the veranda step, so hurried up The Hill carrying wine, six blood-red and wrinkly home-grown tomatoes, some onions, parsnips and carrots (still dirt warm), a dozen fresh eggs, a plump chicken (plucked and gutted) and a brand new cooking pot.

‘It came from Marigold’s bin,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t know what to do with it.’

Tilly raised one eyebrow at Teddy. ‘Indefatigable aren’t you?’

‘It’s called a pressure cooker. I’ll show you.’ He walked past her into the kitchen. Molly wheeled herself to her place at the head of the table, poked a napkin into her collar and smoothed it down the front of her new frock. Teddy began to prepare a chicken-in-wine pot roast. When Tilly stepped into the kitchen Molly said, ‘I had a surprise this morning, young man, a phonograph was delivered to me from the railway station. Would you like to listen to some music while you cook?’

Teddy looked at Tilly, his eyes teary and a handful of chopped onions on the board. Tilly hung her sun hat on a nail on the wall and put her hands on her hips.

‘She’ll do it after she’s set the table,’ said Molly.

Tilly placed a record on the turntable.

Teddy talked, ‘Have either of you read about this new play in America called South Pacific ? It hasn’t been on here yet. I’ve got a mate can get me a record of it soon as it hits the shores. Would you like one, Molly?’

‘It sounds very romantic.’

‘Oh, it is, Molly,’ said Teddy.

‘I hate romance,’ Tilly said. Billie Holiday began to sing a song about broken hearts and painful love. Later over the chicken-and-wine pot roast Tilly played some sort of jazz, the likes of which Teddy had never heard and was too afraid to ask about so he said, ‘George Bernard Shaw died.’

‘Is that so?’ asked Tilly. ‘JD Salinger’s still alive though, could you ask your friend to get me a copy of The Catcher In The Rye ? It hasn’t been published yet.’ Her sarcasm hung in the air.

Molly looked at her, then picked up her steaming bowl of chicken stew and tipped it onto her thighs. The terylene frock Tilly had finished for her that day melted onto her crepe thighs. Tilly froze.

‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ laughed Molly then started to shake, shock whistling softly through her thin elastic lips.

Teddy whipped the skirt away from her thighs before it stuck. He looked at Tilly, still frozen at the table. ‘Butter,’ he snapped. Tilly jumped. He pulled his hip flask from his pocket and poured whisky into the old woman. Then she passed out. He carried her to her bed then left, but was soon back to sit with Tilly. She said nothing, just sat at her mother’s bedside looking grim. Barney arrived with a bottle of cream from Mr Almanac and handed it to Teddy. ‘I did what you said, I said it wasn’t for Mad Molly.’