Rosalie Ham - The Dressmaker

William moved to his wife, took a big backswing and slapped Trudy’s face so hard that she spun 360 degrees. The curtains across the stage shifted in the whirling air. He spoke softly into Trudy’s blotchy, sweaty face. ‘I happen to know the doctor is at the Station Hotel this very minute. If you make one more sound tonight we’ll tie you to this chair with fishing line, fetch him and all swear on Bibles that you’re mad.’ He turned to the cast and in a wavery but confident voice said, ‘Won’t we?’

The cast nodded.

‘Yes,’ said Mona and stepped towards her sister-in-law. ‘You’re an unfit mother – William’ll get custody of this poor baby and you’ll go to the asylum,’ she said and handed the baby to William. The cast nodded again. Felicity-Joy lay back in her father’s arms and put the end of his lace bow in her mouth, then reached up with her hand and placed her fat little middle finger gently in his nostril.

‘I think,’ said Mona, ‘we should take the night off, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said William. ‘Let’s go to the pub. We’ll postpone dress rehearsal until tomorrow.’ The cast left, talking and laughing, traipsing off down the dark main street, feathers bobbing and lace kicking about their wrists and knees.

Trudy turned to Tilly calmly sitting across the aisle and viewed her with fixed and dilated orbs. Tilly raised an eyebrow, shrugged, then followed the others.

Later the cast ambled home and lay rigid in their beds, their eyes fixed to dim shapes in the blackness, doubtful, worried and stewing. They rummaged through the play in their minds, enacting entrances and exits, hoping the audience would not notice that they were playing three characters. No one slept a wink.

Eisteddfod day arrived unusually hot and windy. Irma Almanac’s bones ached so she ate an extra cake with her morning cup of Devil’s Claw tea. Sergeant Farrat took an especially long bath laced with oil of lavender and valerian root. Purl cooked breakfast for her guests – the doctor and Scotty – then went to do her hair and nails. Fred hosed the footpath and tidied the bar and cellar. Lois, Nancy and Bobby joined Ruth and Miss Dimm for a hearty cooked breakfast. Reginald dropped in to see Faith and shared Hamish’s lamb’s fry and bacon. Septimus went for a long walk in the hot wind and marvelled at how lovely the dust looked whipping across the flat yellow plains. Mona and Lesley did breathing and stretching exercises after a light breakfast of cereal and grapefruit. William found Trudy curled under the blankets, trembling and muttering and sucking her knuckles. ‘Trudy,’ he said, ‘you are our director and Lady Macbeth, now act like her!’ He went to Elsbeth in the nursery. Elsbeth stood by the cot holding Felicity-Joy. ‘How is she?’

‘Worse,’ said William and they nodded to each other, resigned. Elsbeth pulled the baby closer.

Tilly leapt out of bed and went straight outside. She stood knee deep in her garden, watching the town empty as the convoy of spectators drove towards Winyerp.

Bobby was running late. He’d had trouble starting the bus. It revved and leapt along the main street towards the hall, and as it ground to the kerb the director, Lady Macbeth herself, shot from the front doors – ejected like an empty shell from a gun chamber. She fell backwards in the bright sunlight onto the footpath and bounced twice, then with the energy of someone possessed, sprang to her feet like a circus acrobat. She clenched her fists and raised them against the hall doors, screeching and pounding.

‘It’s mine, mine, none of you would be here without my direction, my planning and guidance, none of you. I HAVE to be in the eisteddfod, you can’t sack me, I made this play …’

Inside, the cast barricaded the doors with chairs and the sand bucket the Christmas tree once stood in. Trudy pushed at the doors. They did not budge. She turned and eyed the bus. Bobby pulled the handle and the door slapped shut, then he grabbed the keys and sprang to fall flat on the floor. Trudy started kicking the bus door, but it wouldn’t open so she climbed onto the bonnet and pounded the windscreen with her fists.

The painted faces of the scared Macduffs and soldiers peered from the hall windows. William waved up at the doctor, watching from the balcony. He drained his whisky and put the empty glass on the rail, picked up his bag and was soon sauntering up behind the energetic lunatic, dancing at the bus. He tapped her on the shoulder. ‘What’s up?’

Trudy was foaming and gnashing. ‘Them,’ she screamed, ‘that bunch of talentless hams want to sack me!’ She swung and pointed at Mona, ‘She wants my part, she’s just like her mother.’

Then she ran at the locked hall doors, shoulder first, bouncing back and throwing herself bodily against them again. ‘Mona Muncan is not playing Lady Macbeth. I am!’

The doctor beckoned Bobby, peeping up over the dash. He shook his head. The doctor beckoned again.

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ called Nancy.

‘That’s my bus too!’ screamed Trudy. Bobby ran at her and grabbed her and the cast applauded. He held her wrists with his strong footballers’ hands. Trudy screamed. ‘I’m Lady Macbeth, I am!’

The doctor held up a large syringe, flicked it with his middle finger, aimed, grinned malevolently, then jabbed it into Trudy’s big bottom. He stepped back while she dropped to the footpath to lie like a discarded cardigan, then looked down at her.

‘ Full of scorpions is her mind. ’ They carried her to his car and lifted her in.

The cast formed a firemen’s line, loaded the set onto the top of the bus and tied it down securely. As they got on the bus, Mona stood by the door with a clipboard in the crook of her velvet arm marking them off, Lady Macbeth’s frock creasing on the ground about her lacy shoes and Macbeth at her side. Everyone found a seat and sat flapping lace hankies in the heat. Lesley stood at the top of the aisle and clapped his hands twice. The cast fell silent. ‘Attention please, our acting director and producer needs to speak.’

Mona cleared her throat. ‘We’re missing Banquo –’

‘I’ll be Banquo!’ cried Lesley and shot his hand in the air, ‘Me me me.’

‘We’re picking him up at the station,’ said Bobby. He tried to start the bus, which coughed and spluttered. There was a long silence. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘everybody out.’

Tilly looked down at the dull buildings and the slow, brown creek. The roof of the silo shimmered under the sun and dust whipped along the dry, dirt track to the oval. The trees leaned with the hot wind. She went inside. She stood in front of her tailor’s mirror and studied her reflection. She was wreathed in a brilliant halo, like a back-lit actor, dust from tailor’s chalk and flock floating in shafts of light about her. The skeletal backdrop was cluttered with the stuff of mending and dress-making – scraps and off-cuts, remnants of fashion statements that spanned from the sixteenth century onwards. Stacked to the roof, shoved into every orifice in the small tumbling house were bags and bags of material bits spewing ribbon ends, frayed threads and fluff. Cloth spilled from dark corners and beneath chairs and clouds of wool lay about, jumbled with satin corners. Striped rags, velvet off-cuts, strips of velour, lamé, checks, spots, paisley and school uniform mixed with feather boas and sequin-spattered cotton, shearer’s singlets and bridal lace. Coloured bolts stood propped against window sills and balanced across the armchair. Bits of drafted pattern and drawings – svelte designs for women who believed themselves to be size ten – were secured to dusty curtains with pins and clothes pegs. There were pictures torn from magazines and costume designs scribbled on butchers’ paper dumped in clumps on the floor, along with piles of frail battered patterns. Tape measures dripped from nails on studs and the necks of naked mannequin dummies, while scissors stood in empty Milo tins beside old jars brimming with buttons and press studs, like smarties at a party. Zippers tumbled from a brown paper sack and snaked over the floor and onto the hearth. Her sewing machine waited erect on its housing table, an overlocker sitting forlornly at the bottom of the doorless entrance. Calico toiles for baroque fineries filled a whole corner.