Rosalie Ham - The Dressmaker

Molly reached out and patted her daughter’s shoulder with her flat soft hands. ‘It isn’t fair, but you may never have gotten out of this place, you could have been stuck here hiding with me on top of this hill if you hadn’t been sent away, and there is time for you yet.’

‘It hasn’t been fair for you.’

‘I suppose. I was a spinster when your … well, I was naive. But I don’t care, I ended up with you. To think I almost married that man, your “father”. We could have been stuck with him as well! I’ve never told you who –’

‘No need,’ said Tilly, ‘Miss Dimm told me in primary school. I didn’t believe her at first but then when Stewy …’

Molly shivered, ‘I wouldn’t give my baby away so I had to leave my home and my parents. He came after me and used me. I had no money, no job and an illegitimate child to support. He kept us …’ Molly sighed. ‘Then when he couldn’t have his son anymore, I couldn’t have you.’ Molly wiped tears from her eyes and looked directly at Tilly. ‘I went mad with loneliness for you, I’d lost the only friend I had, the only thing I had, but over the years I came to hope you wouldn’t come back to this awful place.’ She looked at her hands in her lap, ‘Sometimes things just don’t seem fair.’

‘Why didn’t you ever leave?’

She said very softly. ‘I had nowhere to go,’ and she looked at Tilly with love, her soft, old face with its high cheekbones and creamy, creased complexion. ‘He wouldn’t let them tell me where you were. I never knew where you were.’

‘You waited?’

‘They took you away in a police car and that’s all I knew.’

Tilly got on her knees in front of her mother and buried her face in her lap, and Molly stroked her head fondly and they wept. Sorry, so sorry, they said to each other.

In the afternoon Molly fell. Tilly was in the garden picking soapwort for salad when she heard the thack of Molly’s walking stick slapping the floor boards. Tilly lay her flat gently, then sprinted down to Pratts. She found Sergeant Farrat at the haberdashery counter.

She ran back to squat by her mother and soothed her and held her hand, but even breathing caused Molly distress and any slight movement sent her face into contortions. She fell in and out of consciousness.

Sergeant Farrat brought Mr Almanac. He stood over Molly, lying on her back on the kitchen floor boards.

‘I think she broke her femur or something when she fell,’ said Tilly, ‘she’s in terrible pain.’

‘Didn’t trip on a rug so it must have been a stroke,’ said Mr Almanac, ‘nothing to be done, just keep her still. God will see to her.’

‘Can you give her something for the pain?’

‘Can’t do anything for stroke.’ Mr Almanac inched away.

‘Please, she’s in pain.’

‘She’ll be in a coma soon,’ he said, ‘be dead by morning.’

She stood quickly and raised her hands, lunging at him to shove him and send him rolling and cracking down The Hill to smash into fifty fractured pieces, but Sergeant Farrat caught her and held her to his big warm body. He helped her put the broken old lady to bed while Molly howled with pain and hit out for anything she could hurt back, but her clenched fists fell like light hail on Sergeant Farrat’s wool coat. Then he drove Mr Almanac away.

He returned with some pills for Molly. ‘I phoned the doctor but he’s away from Winyerp, thirty miles out at a breech birth.’

He watched Tilly grind hemp in a mortar and pestle then scrape it into boiling honey. When the mix had cooled she spilled it onto Molly’s tongue so that it slid down her throat. She squatted by the poppies with a razor blade and a cup but the seed pods were too ripe and the white liquid wouldn’t dribble, so they ripped the poppies from the earth and chopped the seed pods until they were like gravel then boiled them in water. Tilly spooned the poppy tea between Molly’s soft lips but Molly frowned and flung her bony head from side to side. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘No.’

He helped her rub Molly’s tissue-skin with comfrey oil, he mopped her cold brow with dandelion water and he wiped green-tinted mucus from the corners of her eyes with salt water. They sponged and powdered her with lavender dust and held her hands while they sang hymns – ‘Be thou my Guardian and my Guide, And hear me when I call; Let not my slippery footsteps slide, And hold me lest I fall.’

Near to dawn Molly shoved the sheets away from her rattling breast and began to pluck at them. She sucked air through the dry black hole that was her mouth, rasping in out, in and out, and by the time dawn broke, had slipped further. Only her breathing remained. Her body had turned limp and still in her bed, her chest rose and fell, rose and fell with shallow sparse breaths answering the life-long impulse, but finally her chest fell and did not rise again. Tilly held her mother’s hand until it was no longer warm.

• • •

Sergeant Farrat left her and when the sun was high he returned with the undertaker and the doctor from Win-yerp. They brought with them the smell of whisky and antiseptic. They arranged a funeral. ‘The burial will be tomorrow,’ said the undertaker.

Tilly was astonished. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘Health regulations – the only place to keep corpses here is in Reg’s coolroom behind Pratts,’ said the doctor.

Tilly sat on her smoky veranda until night came, trembling in waves, sad fever washing through her. The tip ash skipped down to settle in her hair, and the fire lines at the tip glowed in the dark like a city miles away. She could tie up the loose ends, leave, go to Melbourne, take a job with the traveller who’d visited last autumn.

Yet there was the matter of the sour people of Dungatar. In light of all they had done, and what they had not done, what they had decided not to do – they mustn’t be abandoned. Not yet.

Some people have more pain than they deserve, some don’t. She stood on top of The Hill and howled, wailed like a banshee until lights flicked on and small dots glowed from the houses.

She walked to the meat safe behind Pratts. She stood looking at her mother’s casket, lying darkly, a shadow in a sad place, as Molly’s presence had always been.

‘Pain will no longer be our curse, Molly,’ she said. ‘It will be our revenge and our reason. I have made it my catalyst and my propeller. It seems only fair don’t you think?’

It rained cats and dogs all night as Tilly slept lightly in her mother’s bed. They came to see her, just briefly, and filled her heart. Teddy waved then looked to Pablo in Molly’s arms and they smiled a silver smile. Then they were gone.

Sergeant Farrat put his hand across his forehead and leaned over his log book to write. ‘What time is the funeral?’ said Beula.

‘Two pm.’

‘Are you going, Sergeant?’

He took his hand away and looked up into her eager, pine-coloured eyes, ‘Yes.’

‘Can anyone go?’

‘Anyone can go Beula, but only good people with respectful intentions should attend don’t you think? Without Tilly’s tolerance and generosity, her patience and skills, our lives – mine especially – would not have been enriched. Since you are not sincere about her feelings or about her dear mother and only want to go to stickybeak – well it’s just plain ghoulish isn’t it?’ Sergeant Farrat reddened but held her gaze.

‘Well!’ she said, and headed to Pratts. ‘Hello Muriel.’

‘Morning Beula.’

‘Is she out there?’ she said, jerking her head towards the meat safe.

‘If you want to look –’

‘Going to the funeral?’ Beula asked sharply.

‘Well I –’

‘Sergeant Farrat said if she hasn’t enriched our lives in any way and since we haven’t been patient and respectful it would be insincere and we’re just being ghouls and stickybeaks.’