The Midnight Dress (10 page)

‘No,’ he said. ‘The house is in a paddock, down below the mountain.’

‘Oh,’ said Florence, and he thought she looked a little disappointed.

‘But I’ll build you a house,’ he said, ‘I promise. I could build you a house there, high among the trees.’

They were by the fountain again, watching their silvery reflections in the water. He reached out and touched the velvety mole on her cheek. It was a bold act, right there in the sunlight, but she didn’t pull away.

‘Yes,’ was what she said.

Edie writes down the measurements, puts them on the table and places the lampshade on top. Rose isn’t sure where the lampshade fits in, it makes her nervous. The first of the breezes comes again, she feels a tendril of it against her neck and she closes her eyes.

‘I better go home,’ she says.

‘Yes, it’s late and you have school,’ says Edie. ‘Are you scared of the walk?’

‘No,’ says Rose. It’s the truth.

‘Good,’ says Edie. ‘There’s no point to being frightened of the night.’

They stand on the back steps. Rose can’t see the mountain but she can sense it there, like she could put her hands up and touch it, it’s that close.

‘Did he really build a house up there or was that a trick?’

‘He did. It’s still there. Or it was the last time I went. Now that was many years ago.’

‘Do you know how to get there?’

‘Of course.’

Rose imagines it. Edie smiles in the dark.

‘I could tell you how. It’s a difficult climb but you might make it.’

Rose shrugs.

‘I’m okay,’ she says.

Seed Stitch

‘Do you know anything about some place up on the mountain?’ Detective Glass asks Edie Baker in her kitchen. ‘It’s some house of sorts or a hut, a dwelling anyway. There’s talk of it, that Rose Lovell and Pearl Kelly went there. It was their place, their special place. A kind of hideaway place.’

Edie still hasn’t packed away the makings of the dress. The black thread, the needles, the old lampshade, the confirmation dresses
sans
their petticoats, the tulle remnants scattered on the floor like bits of cloud. The newspaper pattern is folded up there on a chair.

Glass looks at the blue quandongs in pickle jars.

The peacock coverlet on the old day bed.

The shadowy opening of the hall. He shivers.

There in that house he knows suddenly the girl is dead. He’s felt it before in other cases, without warning. He feels the knowledge settle in him like a stone falling to the bottom of a pond. Yes, she’s dead. He shakes his head to clear away the thought.

‘They keep talking about it, that’s all’ he says, almost an apology. ‘All the girls. That and the dress.’

‘Of course I know the place,’ says Edie, watching him carefully. Watching the goose flesh rise on his arms. She’s sitting at the table holding a leaf in her hand. ‘My father built it for my mother in the year 1913. It’s near a waterfall. There were two men who helped him cut the wood but the rest he did himself. Carried the windows piece by piece. A hundred trips he must have made. It was when he could love, before the war knocked all the stuffing out of him. There’s nothing really hidden about it, you just have to know where to find it, that’s all.’

‘Did they go there, do you know?’

‘Yes, I believe they did,’ says Edie. ‘Until Rose burnt it down.’

‘Burnt it down?

‘Yes, she burnt it down. Shall I give you directions?’ says Edie, she pauses then, looks at the detective’s beer gut for effect. ‘It’s a bit of a walk.’

Fucking bananas,’ her father says on the way home from the dole office. ‘I knew it’d be something ridiculous like that.’

The dole office always wants to see the child. It’s a technicality, before they start making payments again. He keeps turning up in different places, this Patrick Lovell, and there has to be proof that he has the child with him, hasn’t just left her at a truck stop somewhere.

Rose has taken the day off school. The last thing she wants is for her father to arrive there to pick her up, for people to see the car, which has terrible suspension and bobs up and down like a ship at sea, and her bearded father like Moses at the helm.

Rose couldn’t stand another day at school, anyway. Another day sitting in the circle talking about nothing. Pearl, all coconut-scented and crystal-shop sparkly, opening up her backpack and pulling out the latest romance novel, running her highlighter-painted fingernails over the cover.

The dole office was in the next town. The dole office madam had a name tag on; it said Marlene.

‘Marlene,’ said Rose’s father, honey smooth, as though about to recite a poem. He stroked his beard, which has grown luxuriant.

‘You were in Brisbane last,’ said Marlene. ‘And before that Theodore and before that Mullumbimby.’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick Lovell.

‘Getting around?’

‘Like to be on the road.’

It was endless that road. When Rose closed her eyes at night it stretched out behind her. Her father drove with one hand on the wheel and the other elbow out the window, a cigarette trailing a plume of smoke. He sang songs like ‘Love me Tender’ and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ in a quavering baritone. He said, Where next Rose? We’re getting itchy feet, Rose. Sometimes he decided by tossing a coin. They would head inland or toward the coast. Follow that bird, he would sometimes shout at the top of his lungs, then turn down the highway after a hawk that would lead them to the next town.

‘And this is your dependant?’ said the dole officer Marlene.

‘Yes, madam.’

‘Enrolled in school?’

‘Yes, madam.’

‘Can she step up to the counter, please?’

‘Rose,’ said her father.

‘What school are you enrolled in?’ asked Marlene.

‘The high school in Leonora.’

‘Not there today?’

‘Obviously not,’ said Rose.

‘Why?’

‘I have a headache.’

‘Which school were you at before here?’

‘Um . . . Theodore State High.’

‘Before that?’

‘I went to Mullumbimby State High but only for about a month.’

The woman studied her closely and then looked back at her father.

‘They need banana pickers and packers,’ she said.

Rose doesn’t say anything about the bananas. At least they’ll have a little money for a while. It won’t be for long. It’s all downhill from the first day of work. She knows exactly how it will pass. He’ll get dressed and drive away in the car, he’ll come home. He’ll say, You know, it wasn’t too bad, or It was shithouse but the men were good, or I met this great guy called Reg, top bloke, salt of the earth.

Reg or Colin or Keith or Tom. Archie, Frank, Larry, Karl, Tony, Barry, Morrie. I met this great bloke called Snow, he’s got a tinnie and he said he’d take us out on the open water. I met this great bloke called Harry and we got to talking and you wouldn’t believe it but he’s been to Africa and got chased by a lion. I met this bloke called Frank, he has six girls, I’m not kidding, and he reckons he might have some clothes you could have a look at. A man called Blue with ginger hair, a tall man called Lofty, a small man called Shorty, a fat man called Tiny. Reg-oh, Dame-oh, John-oh.

In the beginning her father will present the easygoing version of himself. The happy, just-blew-into-town him, the travelling him with the quiet laugh, the looking-for-work him, the down-on-his-luck him, the father-with-a-daughter him, the she’s-a-good-kid him, the we’re-doing-our-best him.

Then he’ll come home on the fifth or sixth day and say, I’m just going out for a while. I won’t be long.

He’ll go down the road, the lane, the track, the highway to the pub and come back later, merry and full of praise. But sometime later, sometimes in days, other times weeks, he’ll change. He’ll grow louder, be full of bluster, his stories will grow more hilarious. He’ll drink until he’s staggering. He’ll let down his disguise, he’ll blow up in their faces like a storm. He’ll argue with their words and ideas, pick apart their stories, he’ll say, What would you know, Harry, lions and Africa aside – have you ever actually fucking really ever been anywhere?

Rose knows it and her father knows she knows it and it makes him nervous.

‘It’ll be different this time,’ he says, after a long while in the car, cane field after cane field after cane field. ‘If it’s bananas then it has to be bananas. It’ll all be good.’

‘I know,’ says Rose.

They buy groceries, a veritable feast, ice cream and soft white bread and a cooked chook. He shouts Rose two new packets of bobby pins. By the time they’ve driven down Main Street and turned across the train tracks he’s singing.

‘Jesus,’ says Rose, when they pull into the caravan park.

‘Who’s that?’ says Patrick Lovell.

Because Pearl Kelly is waiting on their doorstep.

The problem with Pearl Kelly, thinks Rose, is that she never thinks things through. Not really. She can never tell when people don’t want her around because she goes through life believing everyone in the whole goddamn world loves her.

‘I walked,’ Pearl says, jumping up as they get out of the car. ‘Then I started freaking because you weren’t here but this lady from the shop said you’d be back soon.’

‘Dad, this is Pearl,’ says Rose.

‘Pearl,’ says Patrick. ‘I haven’t heard that name for years.’

‘It’s terrible, isn’t it? I wish I was something else.’

‘What could you be?’ says Patrick.

‘Something much more romantic,’ says Pearl. ‘Persephone.’

She looks at Mr Lovell and smiles. It’s exactly the same sweet sly smile she uses on Paul Rendell.

‘Come on,’ says Rose. She can’t believe Pearl is flirting with her father, she starts walking away toward the beach.

‘See you, Mr Lovell,’ says Pearl, laughing over her shoulder.

The problem with Pearl Kelly is that nothing bad has ever happened to her. So what, if she can’t find her father – she lives in a shop full of crystals and listens to fucking panpipes all day and she doesn’t understand anything. The problem with Pearl Kelly is she lives in a dream world that she’s going somewhere in life, but one day she’ll wake up and be in the same town still going out with Jonah Pedersen.

Rose walks ahead onto the sand; she is so angry she thinks she could die. The sea is as flat as a pond, grey-green, the dark clouds have tattered hems. Rose watches them unravelling their edges.

‘Sorry,’ says Pearl. ‘I didn’t know you’d be angry if I came.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ says Rose.

‘I just wanted to say hello because you weren’t at school.’

‘I was just busy,’ says Rose.

‘Doing what?’ says Pearl.

‘Just stuff.’

‘Okay.’

‘You don’t get it.’

‘I’ll go.’

‘Don’t,’ says Rose.

They climb up the rocks toward Rose’s bay. Pearl is a hopeless climber. She has no sense of where to put her feet. She’s laughing as though climbing is funny. As though finding footholds is a joke.

‘Hang on,’ she laughs. ‘Hang on, you’re going too fast. You’re like a mountain goat.’

Rose has to show her where to put her hands and where to put her feet. She has to offer her a hand. When she lets go again the imprint of Pearl’s palm stays burning there. The fifteen-minute climb takes almost half an hour. When they reach the little bay they sit down and dig their toes into the sand.

‘Your dad’s nice,’ says Pearl.

‘Lovely,’ says Rose.

‘I mean it. He’s got really nice eyes.’

‘Thanks,’ says Rose. ‘I feel a lot better knowing you like my dad.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Nothing,’ says Rose. ‘Everything probably.’

‘Did you go back to see Miss Baker?’

‘Yes.’

‘Has she started making the dress?’

‘Yes.’

‘What colour is it?’

‘Dark blue.’

‘That’d suit you.’

Rose wants to say something about Edie. She wants to say something about her being weird and the huge lonely mildewy house that’s so full but so empty, but she stops, stares out to sea.

‘You should let your hair out,’ says Pearl.

‘You saw it,’ says Rose. ‘It’s an out-of-control afro.’

Pearl laughs. ‘You’re funny,’ she says.

‘I’m not kidding,’ says Rose. ‘It really is. You saw it in the shop that day.’

‘It wasn’t that bad.’

‘I need to dye it black again.’

‘I think you should just let it be red.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s beautiful,’ says Pearl. ‘And romantic.’

She opens her little backpack and takes out
The Alchemist’s Daughter
. On the cover there is a pensive woman with red hair and a man with an arrogant expression stands behind her in a morning suit.