Four Fires (56 page)

which has to be good. She's using dog collars as belts and making hats in nylon, in hot pinks and oranges that she's spraypainting.'

'Mike, that's not what we're talking about, or whether you're right or wrong about the trends.

We're talking about you and Mr Stan!' Sarah looks at Mike, 'It's about doing the right thing.' She tilts her head to one side and smiles at her brother. 'It's the Maloney way, you know that.'

Mike makes one final protest. 'But I have! I have done the right thing. I offered my designs to Mr Stan. Sally Harris offered me a chance to get my designs into their shops, to finance a winter collection. I could have just said thank you very much and resigned from Style & Trend and next thing they know I'm in bed with Country Stores!'

'I think you are already in bed with Country Stores/ Morrie chuckles in a clumsy attempt to calm the atmosphere.

But the joke is ignored by Mike, though Sarah smiles in recognition. She sighs, 'You don't offer your designs shouting at him from the door, it was arrogant. No wonder he went berserko-kaperko! The shammes, the boy he employed to drown rats and clean the dunny and who has barely completed his training as a cutter, now offers him the exclusive use of his designs
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for his winter collection. Don't you think that's just a little bit cheeky?'

'How else could I have done it? I didn't mean to shout at him like that. I didn't know he was going to sack me, did I? I thought I could tell him about the Country Stores' offer and then say, why not him and me do the winter range?'

'Mike, even now you're not being completely honest, are you?

'What now?'

'Well, the offer from Sally Harris means you'd get your collection into fifteen shops, of which only two are in the city, one here in Melbourne, the other in Brisbane. If Mr Stan accepted your winter range, you'd be selling to the retail trade all over Australia. It would be by far the better deal for a young designer wanting to earn himself a reputation in a hurry.' Sarah, as usual, has read Mike's mind and Mike is too stunned to reply. She's done it to us all our lives and it can be bloody annoying if you're on the receiving end.

Sarah then says, 'We may still be able to get him to look at your four fires 4/9

designs, Mike. If Morrie and Sophie see him and explain the whole thing and then you go in and apologise to Mr Stan.'

'Apologise?'

'C'mon, Mike, you have to, then maybe he'll be receptive, or at least hear you out.'

Morrie calls Mr Stan from the corner telephone booth; they've applied for a phone, but the waiting list is still six months long and even then the PMG won't guarantee it. Mr Stan agrees to see him and Sophie. Morrie misses out on the morning lectures to go and reports back lunchtime that Mr Stan has agreed to see Mike, but that he hasn't done so with a lot of good grace and during their conversation has never once referred to Mike by name but instead has called him 'the regular genius', which in Yiddish is a disparaging way of referring to someone.

'Mike you have to tell Mr Stan everything, I mean about the conversation at Florentino's with Miss Harris. Don't leave anything out, don't try to make excuses for yourself, come clean, okay?'

'Sarah, you don't know Mr Stan, he'll slaughterate me.'

'That's okay, he's already sacked you, the worst that can happen is that he can say no to using your designs for his winter collection. You've still got Miss Harris up your sleeve and anyway, having been straight with him, Mr Stan won't be able to badmouth you to the suppliers.'

Mike agrees to do his best. 'But I'm not eating humble pie.'

Sophie kisses him, 'Sometimes this pie, it can be healthy to eat, to make you strong, Mikey darlink.' Sophie loves Mike and he knows she's always on his side.

Mike tells Mr Stan everything, the whole Florentino-dinner conversation with Sally Harris. Mr Stan hears him out and turns him down flat.

Nor does he offer him his job back, not that Mike would have accepted it unless his designs were involved and Mr Stan has never taken him seriously as a designer. As Mr Stan had earlier said to him, designers are regarded in the local rag trade as glorified cutters.

Designer is only a somebody if he lives in Paris, Milan or London. In Australia, the major credit for the Gown of the Year always goes to the owner, never to the designer, who will get about the same mention in Australian Fashion News as the model, machinist and the person who did the beadwork or the hand-finishing. So Mike's proposition that he design a range of Australian-inspired fashions doesn't exactly make Mr Stan jump up and down. In fact, to tell you the truth, he is less than polite about the concept.

'So let me see, the regular genius makes some designs. Colours the Australian land, wattle flowers, the budgies . . .' 'Rosellas,' Mike corrects.

'Leafs from the gum tree! Let me tell you something for nothing, Mr Regular Genius. We got
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such a wattle tree in za garden, every year you should clean up the mess! If you ask people what does a parrot, they tell you it shits the bottom the cage. And leafs? The gum leafs, you got a cold you rub za oil on your chest. From the landscape you want to know what you got? You got brown, you got bulldust, you got ashes! From this you want I should make dresses!'

'Mr Stan, Norma Tullo is in all the good shops, her stretch pants are selling like hot cakes.'

But Mike doesn't get any further. 'Don't tell me Tullo! Tullo, shmullow! A flash in za pants!' Only he pronounces it 'A flesh in za pants', which is pretty witty and he's got it right by mistake. Or perhaps not, Mr Stan is a famous wit in The Lane. As Mike explains later, it's the very 'flesh in the pants' that makes Tullo's invention of the stretch pants a sure-fire winner. Mr Stan continues, 'Next year who is Norma Tullo? Let me tell you, from stretch pants she goes bottom up!' He grins at his own joke.

"I don't agree, Mr Stan, her other styles are selling well despite the recession.' Mike doesn't want to tell Mr Stan that Georges and Myers, and David Jones in Sydney, have gone big for Tullo, who has turned the proverbial little black cocktail dress into the little yellow, orange, blue, red, green, in fact all the rosella colours, cocktail dress. What's more, according to Sally Harris and later confirmed by a visit to Georges and Myers, because of the sexy cut and wonderful body-clinging fabrics Tullo is using, she's even selling more little black dresses than anyone else in the rag trade. Young Australian women like wearing clothes a matronly figure couldn't get away with.

So Mike is sent away with a flea in his ear, but at least Mr Stan won't make it difficult for him to use the suppliers from The Lane. What Mr Stan doesn't tell Mike or anyone else is that he personally thinks the boom in the garment trade is over. That the good years are gone and the recession Australia is going through is yet another sign of the bad times that lie ahead. Over the years he's made some very prudent investments in real estate and that's where he sees the future. He wouldn't have gone into partnership with Mike even if he'd thought he had a chance of succeeding, which, of course, he doesn't. He has decided to get out of the rag trade and people would later remark with some surprise that he, of all people, hadn't resorted to the mandatory fire to collect a fat insurance cheque as a departing bonus. This, especially as it was strongly rumoured in The Lane that his summer range was a dud, better going up in flames than on the racks of retailers. Flinders Lane was notorious for its fires, the conditions were primitive and in the winter the heating on the factory floor would usually consist of half a dozen kerosene heaters or small open radiators the women would bring in to warm their legs. The danger of a fire starting was always present. The flimsy materials that were being increasingly used at the time for the cheaper end of the summer dress market, bri-nylon and terylene and the other synthetics, were highly flammable. The point being that the summer fashions were being produced in the winter months. A garment brushing against a heater could go up at a touch, simply exploding into instant flame.

The fire hoses were never maintained and in one case, when Bradford House burnt down, the flames at first might have been manageable but when they tried the fire hose there wasn't any water. In truth the fire hose had never been connected to a water pipe but had simply been installed in case an inspector from the fire brigade came around. Eventually all four floors and the twenty-seven factories and businesses in the building were completely destroyed.

Whenever a fire occurred and, as Mike tells it, they were not infrequent, the immediate gossip in The Lane was that it was deeply suspect. When business is crook, a sudden fire can help no end, the insurance assisting greatly to balance the books. People will point out the strange coincidence that most of the fires occur at night. Invariably
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be put down to one of the workers leaving a radiator on near a pile of fabric. Very convenient these piles of synthetic fabric left lying around near a radiator after everyone's gone home.

Even Australian Fashion News would occasionally have a go. 'Heard of a flustered maker-up in The Lane the other day. Seems he had taken out a new insurance policy covering him against fire and flood. He was trying to find out how to start a flood.'

There was also the story often told: Hymie is walking down the lane and he's looking pretty glum. Moshe comes up to him and puts his arm around his shoulders. 'So hows it going, Hymie?

They tell me things are not so good za business. I'm sorry to hear about the fire in your factory.'

Hymie whirls around and clasps his hand tightly over Moshe's mouth and whispers urgently,

'Shut up, you fool, that's only next week!'

Well, Mr Stan does no such thing. He announces that he's closing down and Friday will be the last pay envelope. Everyone is invited to the farewell party and with their notice of termination comes the last of Mr Stan's rhythmic couplets, printed on special imitation vellum paper and made into a scroll and tied with a red velvet ribbon. Every worker receives one as a keepsake. It is the longest and saddest poem he's ever written and many a tear is shed upon reading it.

Sorry girls, but we're closing shop

Za last pay's Friday, three o'clock

We'll have a party, so hring a plate

A piano, free booze, let's celebrate!

Style £r Trend is now no more

All grows quiet on za factory floor

So now, my dears, I wish you well In life what happens, who can tell?

Like my own family you are to me

Cheers, let's drink to za memory!

Goodbye, adieu to Flinders Lane AND

To za Buyers who know no shame

I wish only bad luck comes to pass From now on, you can kiss my arse!

Mr Stan even finds a position for Mrs P, which isn't with Henry Haskin as she'd so often threatened since the news of the contents of Wilma Pinkington's jumbo-sized 4711 bottle has preceded her, but he finally gets her placed with a small factory that specialises in wedding dresses and ball gowns at the expensive end of the market where beads remain the big thing. He also finds jobs in other factories for five of the old-timers, people who had been with the firm from almost the beginning. Surprisingly, Mike is also invited to the farewell party. He doesn't want to go, but Sarah insists and he returns happy as a sand boy because he and Mr Stan have made up their differences.

After his virginity was lost Mike had hoped for a few more lessons under the direction of Miss Harris, but she says nothing can happen until the deal with Country Stores has been settled. She points out to him that if they find out she is having an affair with him they will be reluctant to make him an offer. 'Our MD's very big on morality and is on the committee of the Anglican Cathedral Restoration Fund,' Sally Harris says, 'The first whiff of a scandal and it's all over.' This is fair enough. Mike is quite glad actually, because he doesn't know how he'd be in bed when he's sober, you know, whether he'd be able to perform to her Banbury Cross galloping expectations.

Sally Harris makes an appointment for Mike to see the managing director and chairman of Country Stores, who is the same person. It's for ten on the Wednesday morning, some weeks after Mike has been sacked from Style & Trend.

Mike turns up for an interview accompanied by Sarah, who is dressed in a light khaki gaberdine suit with a nicely tailored look. Casual & Business' is how Mike has named it. The khaki is quite severe but is offset with large bright-green buttons and a green breast pocket. It's a pretty daring
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fashion statement, nobody has been game to use khaki since the war. Under the jacket, Sarah is wearing a matching green polo-neck sweater in a synthetic material. Another cheeky touch, combining synthetic with natural fibre. The skirt is plain khaki but cut to show Sarah's figure and is about three inches shorter than the prevailing fashion, so that the hem is just below the kneecap to show off her excellent legs.

Sarah wears no stockings and has on a pair of high-heel strappy Ferragamo beige sandals, which Mike has bought in Georges for her birthday. They were horribly expensive and Sarah wants him to take them back, but he persuades her that they're an investment, a beautiful prop for when she's showing off his gear at university.

Fortunately, it's a warm day and she can get away without stockings. She wears neither hat nor gloves and her hair, now cut into a bob, is pure molten copper. She wears a touch of black eyeliner to emphasise the sharp blue of her eyes and a fairly light lipstick, red with a tint of orange.

They've taken a taxI to the Country Stores' main Melbourne shop which is at the lower end of Elizabeth Street, where Mr Pongarse, the managing director, has his office.

'Now remember, Mike, you pronounce it Pon-garse, not Pong-arse,' Sarah giggles. 'If you get it wrong it could be the shortest interview in history.'

From the moment they step out of the taxi onto the busy pavement outside the shop, all eyes are on Sarah, both male and the younger females. The males because she looks dead sexy and the younger women because her outfit is so stunning and they can immediately envision themselves in it. They haven't gone ten feet before the first young girl comes up.