Rosalie Ham - The Dressmaker

‘Oh my,’ exclaimed Evan, putting his hand to his heart. ‘This is indeed the right judgement. Tonight’s Belle of the Ball is … my good lady wife, Marigold Pett-e-mon!’ He moved towards his blushing wife, took her small hand and ushered her onto the dance floor to lead the evening’s first waltz.

At the end of the waltz, Beula moved to Marigold and assisted her to the powder room to catch her breath and splash cold water on her wrists. Beula stood over her fanning her with a thick wad of toilet tissue. ‘So, you won Belle of the Ball, in a dress she made,’ she hissed. Marigold nodded.

‘You know who her father is, don’t you?’ said Beula.

‘A travelling repair man, a Singer Sewing-machine man,’ replied the Belle.

‘Wrong. Molly gave her his name, it’s her middle name.’

Marigold leaned closer to Beula who whispered into her ear, then stood back to make sure she had heard, watching her rash turn purple.

Tilly and Teddy stood holding hands, smiling in the open doorway. They tapped their feet to the music, watching Tilly’s gowns float about the floor. ‘Oh Lord,’ she said when Faith tried for F sharp. There was no one at the door – just two empty seats, the raffle book and the door prize – a new thermos and a collapsible canvas stool.

Tilly reached for the floor plan of the tables and leaned over the diagram. There were six tables with about a dozen names listed on each. She peered hard at the names.

‘Look for where table six is,’ said Teddy. Fred Bundle beckoned to him from a crowd of footballers lounging by the entrance, so Teddy stepped just inside the door, letting her hand slip from his.

‘Table six,’ said Tilly. ‘Norma and Scotty Pullit, Bobby Pickett and T. McSwiney …’ T. Dunnage was printed lightly beneath T. McSwiney but it had been scribbled out. She located her name again on a table with the Beaumonts but they had used a red biro to cover her name. At the primary school table with Miss Dimm, Nancy, Ruth and others, someone had gone to the trouble of using the pinprick-on-felt technique to perforate the plan where a name had been written, then tear the tiny piece out, leaving a jagged little square. On Purl’s table, a name tacked onto the very end of the table had been scribbled out in black ink. Down the front at the band table, written in big pencil letters, some of them backward, was BARNEY. Next to his name Barney had added ‘+ TILLY’ in red pencil. Barney was in charge of re-filling the band members’ drinks and turning the pages on Faith’s music book. But even then, someone had scrubbed out her name.

She straightened and turned to the doorway, but Teddy was not there – only the solid backs of footballers. She stood unsure. Councillor Evan Pettyman turned to her, snorted and spat at the floor near her hem. She gazed down at the grape-coloured splash, then up into Beula Harridene’s amber eyes. Beula smiled and said, ‘Bastard, murderer,’ then pulled the door shut. Tilly stood alone in the foyer in her brilliant magenta Lys Noir gown, then wrapped her shawl tight about her and reached for the handle. Someone held it from the other side.

Teddy found her sitting in the park under a tree, shaking and completely unnerved. He handed her some watermelon firewater.

‘They just don’t want us to show them up.’

‘It’s not that – it’s what I’ve done. Sometimes I forget about it and just when I’m … it’s guilt, and the evil inside me – I carry it around with me, in me, all the time. It’s like a black thing – a weight … it makes itself invisible then creeps back when I feel safest … that boy is dead. And there’s more.’ She drank again.

‘Tell me.’

She started to cry.

‘Oh Til,’ he said and held her. ‘Tell me.’

He took her back to his caravan by the tip and they sat opposite each other and she told him everything. It took a long time and she cried a great deal so he kissed her over and over and cried with her and pulled her close. He stroked her and soothed her and told her that it wasn’t her fault, that nothing was her fault, that everyone was wrong. In the end they made close and tender love and then she slept.

He covered her in her magenta gown and sat naked next to her and smoked cigarettes, pondering her disturbed sleep, with tears sliding over his cheeks. Then he woke her. He handed her a glass of champagne and said, ‘I think we should get married.’

‘Married?’ She laughed and cried at the same time.

‘It’s what they’d hate most – and besides, you’re the girl for me. There could never be anyone else now.’

She nodded, smiling through her tears at him.

‘We’ll do it here. We’ll have a big wedding in Dungatar then we’ll move away to somewhere better.’

‘Better?’

‘Away from bad things, to a good place, where the Saturday night dances are better –’

‘And will you take my mad mother as well?’

‘We can even take my slow brother.’

‘Barney,’ she laughed again and clapped, ‘yes, Barney!’

‘I’m serious.’

She didn’t reply so he said. ‘It’s the best offer you’re ever going to get ’round here.’

‘Where would we go?’

‘To the stars,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you to the stars, but first …’ She stretched out her arms to him, and he lay down with her again.

Later they lay together on top of the silo looking up; two silhouettes on a corrugated silver roof under a velvet black sky shot with starshine and a cold, white moon. The air was chilly, but the Autumn sun had warmed the iron.

‘You never played with me when I was little,’ said Tilly.

‘You never came near us.’

‘I watched you play here, you and Scotty and Reg. You used binoculars to search for rockets from “out of space”. Sometimes you were cowboys scouting for conquering Indians on horseback.’

Teddy laughed. ‘And Superman. I got into real trouble once,’ he said. ‘We’d jump into the grain trucks as they pulled out of the loading dock then stay on top of the wheat until we crossed the creek, where we’d jump in. The sarge waited one day with Mae. Boy, did she kick my bum.’

‘Fearless,’ said Tilly softly.

‘Fearless,’ he said, ‘and I still am.’

‘Are you?’ She sat up. ‘What about my curse?’

‘I don’t believe in curses. I’ll show you,’ he said and stood.

Tilly sat up and watched him inch down the sloping roof to the edge. ‘What are you doing?’ He looked down to the grain trucks lined up beside the loading dock.

‘They might be empty,’ she called.

‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re full.’

‘Don’t,’ she cried, ‘please don’t.’ He turned and smiled at her and blew a kiss.

• • •

Evan Pettyman stopped his car outside his house and helped his drunk wife inside. He lay her on her bed and was sliding her stockings from her limp feet when he heard someone in the distance, calling. He listened. It came from over at the railway line.

‘Help, I need your help … please.’

He found Tilly Dunnage edging up and down the rim of a railway truck with her gown torn and electric hair flapping in the night wind as she stirred the seed in the truck with a long pole.

‘He’s in there …’ she called, in a voice that came from somewhere after death,

‘… but he won’t take hold of the pole.’

Tilly sat opposite Sergeant Farrat. He held a biro poised over paper and carbon on a clipboard. His police uniform was crumpled, soft and limp, and in places his white hair stood on end.

‘What happened, Tilly?’

She spoke in that voice that came from far away, looking at the floor. ‘No,’ she said, ‘my name’s Myrtle, I’m still Myrtle …’