Rosalie Ham - The Dressmaker

An hour or so later, in Act 1, Scene V, Mona writhed on the canopied bed;

‘… that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements. Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here …’

She masturbated through her petticoats, she gasped and sobbed and thrashed. The audience wriggled, chairs creaked, the Act ended and the lights dimmed.

When they came up thirteen seconds later for Act 2, Banquo and Fleance swept onto the stage to find their audience had vanished. Only the four judges remained, leaning together, whispering. A broad matronly woman in a straw hat stood and said, ‘That will be all,’ then they clattered out together without a backwards glance. The cast emerged from the wings to watch them disappear into the refreshment room for supper and presentations.

They said very little on the journey home. They drank watermelon firewater from the cup awarded to them for Best Costume, and lolled moistly in the rattling bus.

‘Sergeant Farrat will be pleased,’ said Mona.

‘We should have done a musical,’ said Nancy looking back at Mona. ‘Who picked Shakespeare?’

‘It was the only play in the library,’ said Muriel.

‘Anyway, no one can sing,’ said Ruth.

‘No one can act!’ snapped Faith.

Late in the afternoon the bus and all the cars of the townspeople stopped outside the hall, or at least where the hall once stood. The cast climbed slowly down from the bus and stood looking about them. Everything was black and smoking – the entire town had been razed. A few smouldering trees remained, and a telephone pole here, a brick chimney there. Anxious pet dogs sat where front gates once swung and chooks scratched between the twisted water tanks and iron roofs littering the black landscape. The cast stood in the wafting smoke, hankies to their eyes and noses, trying to block out the smell of burned rubber, scorched timber, paint, cars and curtains. They had been burned out of existence. Nothing remained, except Tilly Dunnage’s chimney. Mona pointed to a figure sitting beside it, moving his arm up and down, waving.

They walked in a pack to the main road where they paused to check for cars before crossing, then along the charcoal footpath, past the creaking shell of Pratts store where tin cans had exploded and cloth bolts still glowed. Reginald went to check his butcher’s saw but found only a molten abstract sculpture. When they got to the top of The Hill they stood ankle deep in the hot charred clumps looking down to where their homes had once stood, and saw only mounds of smoking, grey-black coal and rubble. The goalposts at the footy ground were spent matchsticks lying on the black oval, and the willows that once crowded the creek bend were big, bare scaffolds, dead and curled.

Sergeant Farrat, singed and soot-smudged, sat on the chimney hearth, slapping a blackened, withered branch up and down between his blistered patent leather shoes.

‘What happened?’ asked the inspector.

‘There’s been a fire.’ Sergeant Farrat slapped his twig up and down, up and down.

‘My school,’ sobbed Miss Dimm. They all started to cry, first slowly and quietly then increasing in volume. They groaned and rocked, bawled and howled, their faces red and screwed and their mouths agape, like terrified children lost in a crowd. They were homeless and heartbroken, gazing at the smouldering trail splayed like fingers on a black glove. It had burned north as far as the cemetery, then stopped at the town’s firebreak.

‘Well,’ said Lois, ‘we’ve all been down to Rufe and gave over our money for our insurance, haven’t we?’

They began to calm, nodding, ‘Yes,’ wiping away their tears and rubbing their noses on their sleeves.

Ruth looked horrified. ‘I gave it to Tilly for the soldiers’ costumes, remember?’

The people of Dungatar gazed at Ruth. They stood numbly on the black hill, the air around them still and hot, wisps of smoke crawling up their stockings and filtering through their ribboned skirts, the charred wood planks of Tilly’s house behind them softly clicking and spatting. The sergeant started to giggle hysterically.

‘What will we do now?’ asked Fred.

‘Have a drink,’ said Scotty, and drank. The inspector reached for the bottle.

‘I can see Mum’s house from up here,’ said Mona and smiled slyly at her brother. He grinned and bounced on the balls of his feet. The people of Dungatar looked out over the ruined town to the homestead, standing whole and perfect, untouched on the slight rise in the distance, its corrugated roof shimmering red in the setting sun.

‘Good old fart hill,’ said William.

‘Let’s go and see mother,’ said Mona.

They moved silently as one towards Windswept Crest, a motley bunch in very effective Baroque costumes.