Rosalie Ham - The Dressmaker

The sergeant led her to his car and drove her to the doctor at Winyerp. They sat in the surgery. Beula could make out the fuzzied outline of a white-ish figure moving about in front of her. It said ‘Hmmm.’

‘I tripped and fell,’ said Beula through her rotting face and burst adenoids, pink bubbles boiling through her lips.

‘You tripped?’ The doctor looked at the sergeant and made a gesture to suggest she’d been drinking.

‘It was dark,’ she said.

‘You may have suffered internal optical damage – it looks like the eye casement is shattered,’ said the doctor and handed her a letter addressed to a specialist in Melbourne.

‘The nasal bone has crashed against the lacrimal bone splintering it. This in turn has severed the lacrimal duct, damaging the sphenoid bone and therefore the optic foramen and, unfortunately, the all important macula luteras. It’s too late to do anything about it now of course …’

The lights had gone out for Beula.

Sergeant Farrat gave her dark glasses, tied a scarf around her chin, placed a white cane in her hand and put her on a train to Melbourne with a tag pinned to the back of her cardigan which said, ‘Beula Harridene, C/- police station, Dungatar, Ph: 9 (trunk call)’. Then he went to see Tilly, stepping from his car in the orange glow of dusk, his green-beaded, silk brocade matador’s costume glinting. Tilly had altered it to fit the sergeant by adding gold silk inserts and the sergeant had attached green tassels to them. They stood in her garden, waist deep in flowers and bushes, herbs and vegetables, the air around them clear and fresh from the recent rain.

‘I see Molly has put the tip fire out,’ joked the sergeant.

‘Yes,’ said Tilly.

‘Did you hear about poor Beula?’

‘No.’

‘She’s gone to the sanatorium.’ The sergeant rubbed his hands together.

‘Tell me everything,’ said Tilly.

‘Well …’ he began, and ended by saying, ‘… it must have been an awful fall, she looks like she’s been hit by the corner of a flying fridge.’

‘When did it happen?’ said Tilly.

‘The night of Molly’s funeral.’

She looked up at the heavens and smiled.

That afternoon Nancy arrived to fetch Mr Almanac. She found him in the back room stuck fast, his head bent into the cupboard where he kept his apothecary measures, his round shoulders resting against the ledge. Nancy carefully backed him out and shunted him out the door, checked for traffic and gave him a gentle shove. He tripped down the kerb and across the road while Nancy switched off the lights, padlocked the refrigerator and secured the front door. Mr Almanac accelerated towards his wife, who was dozing in the sun. He tumbled past her and continued through the house, whose hallway ran from the front door to the back. Nancy glanced across at Mrs A, then up and down the street. She frowned, cupped her hands around her eyes and peered back into the gloomy shop. She looked at Mrs A again, then bolted across the street, past Mrs Almanac, who felt the passing breeze and opened her eyes. ‘Holy Mary, mother of God,’ she heard Nancy say.

Sergeant Farrat followed Mr Percival Almanac’s foot scrapes all the way across the back yard to the creek’s edge. He stood on the bank looking sadly at the brown water, mosquitos singing around him. He removed his blue cap and rested it over his heart before dropping it despondently on a log and carefully removing and folding his clothes. When all that remained were his red satin boxers he eased into the still creek. In the centre his white head sunk and small bubbles circled on the watery surface, then Mr Almanac’s head rose. The sergeant held him over his shoulder like a rigid upright question mark with slimy green cumbungi streaming from his bent neck, yabbies clinging to his ear lobes and leeches hanging from his lips.

Tilly stood by the muddy mound of her mother’s grave and related the details of Beula’s and Mr Almanac’s accidents. ‘Like you said, “Sometimes things just don’t seem fair”.’

• • •

She heard the galah before she reached the crest of The Hill. The committee members of the Dungatar Social Club were being held against the veranda by the bird, which was dancing at them, screeching, wings outstretched, crest rigid. The women wore ‘Tilly originals’ and looked afraid. She strode to the veranda, looked at the galah and said, ‘Shsss.’

He stopped, cocked his head at her and closed his beak. His crest flattened and he waddled pigeon-toed to the gatepost, climbed to the top, then turned and hissed once more at the intruders.

‘Your garden, Tilly,’ said Trudy, ‘so pretty, such a big job you’ve done and still managing to sew so well!’

They were all smiling at her.

‘A very fragrant garden indeed.’

‘You have some very unusual plants.’

Tilly plucked a blade of grass and chewed it.

Trudy cleared her throat, ‘We’re putting on a eisteddfod –’

‘We’re doing Macbeth ’ , snapped Elsbeth, ‘Shakespeare’s Macbeth . It’s a play. Itheca and Winyerp Dramatic Societies are doing A Streetcar Named Desire and H.M.S. Pinafore –’

‘Light entertainment,’ said Muriel disparagingly.

‘So we’re doing Macbeth , and we’ve chosen YOU to do the costumes.’

Tilly looked at each of them. They were all nodding at her, smiling. ‘Really?’ she said, ‘ Macbeth ?’

‘Yes,’ said Trudy.

Elsbeth held up The Complete Works of Shakespeare , and Costumes Throughout the Ages . ‘We have some ideas about what we want …’

‘Show me,’ said Tilly. Elsbeth hurried towards her, the page open at drawings of men dressed in dull togas with rope looped around the waist, full sleeves and scalloped collars and women in tight, draw-string vests.

‘I like the ones over the page,’ said Trudy. Tilly turned the page. The pictures showed men costumed in skirts with layers and layers of petticoats and yards and yards of lace dripping from arms covered in voluminous cuffed ruffles and frills. They posed on the page in stockings, below-knee pantaloons with godet bell-bottoms or deep flounces above high-heeled Cromwell slippers tied with large satin bows. Their hats were oversized and heavily plumed. The women wore three-tiered full skirts with ruffled bustles, elaborate multi-storied architect-designed fontanges, feather muffs and jackets with complicated jabots or frilled revers.

‘But this is Baroque,’ said Tilly, ‘seventeenth century.’

‘Precisely,’ said Elsbeth.

‘It is Shakespeare,’ said Trudy.

Muriel was incredulous. ‘You’ve heard of him haven’t you?’

‘She may not have,’ said Mona. ‘I hadn’t until last week.’

Tilly raised an eyebrow and recited,

‘Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the caldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog …’

The committee members looked at each other, confused.

Tilly raised an eyebrow. ‘Act four scene one, three witches at the cauldron? No?’

The women remained blank. ‘We haven’t actually read the play yet,’ said Muriel.

‘I prefer the costumes I selected, don’t you? asked Trudy.

Tilly looked directly at Trudy and said, ‘They’d definitely be the most effective.’ Trudy nodded emphatically at her friends.

Elsbeth took a step closer to Tilly. ‘Can you manage them?’

‘I can, but –’ said Tilly.

‘How soon can you start?’ interrupted Elsbeth.

Tilly studied the pictures, thinking. The women looked at each other and shrugged. Then she smiled at them. ‘I’d be more than delighted to contribute to your drama by making these costumes … provided you pay me.’ She snapped the book closed and held it to her breast. ‘You still have outstanding accounts that go back twelve months and more.’