The Midnight Dress (13 page)

‘If you’re going to try to find it, you have to promise to be careful in the gully,’ says Edie. ‘When it rains a lot that creek really comes down and the thing gets swamped. You can’t even see the rocks. I got stuck on the other side many times. And you’ll have to leave early or you can’t get back in time before the dark. It’s not the best time of the year to climb, but I know when you want to do it, you can’t help it, you just have to. It has a special pull, that mountain, a sort of gravity.’

Rose doesn’t like that the woman seems to understand these things about her.

‘Do you really think it’s still there?’ asks Rose.

‘I hope with all my heart it is.’

Fern Stitch

So here’s Detective Glass again standing on the track that leads up through the trees. I could show you him on the fallen tree too, the one that traverses the gully; that’s a real crack. He isn’t a bushwalker, he hates bushwalking, but this is even worse. ‘Fuck’, is what he says at every single rock. ‘Fuck’.

He has a picture of the midnight dress inside his trouser pocket. The one that Mallory Johnson drew for him and insisted he have. He’s kept it like a talisman. That’s what it feels like. If he keeps it he’ll find the girl. He’ll find her body. That’s what he thinks. He’s never been superstitious like this before. It leaves him feeling uncomfortable, itchy; the picture burns inside his pocket. In the car he’s felt compelled to take it out occasionally, smooth out the creases gently, rest his hands over it. The shithole backwater town is getting to him.

He has employed an Aboriginal tracker, well-known, by the name of Waldron. When Waldron alights from the police car in Miss Baker’s backyard, he looks too old to climb anything. He stands for a long time, his cowboy shirt tucked into his too-short trousers. But when he starts, Glass is amazed to see that Waldron is like a wallaby, springing across the rocks in the creeks, cupping them with his bare feet. He can see a nest fallen from a tree and the shallow twisted valley left by a snake.

‘Don’t like the bush?’ Waldron asks.

‘No, mate, don’t like the bush,’ Glass replies.

He likes a flat patch of mowed lawn, a neatly trimmed hedge. He doesn’t like the way the rainforest crowds in along the track, nothing holding it back but the thin strip of mud. It’s all too messy, without edges: one minute quiet, the next igniting with birdsong. He hates that he can’t see the end of it. Standing here on a rock in the gully, a wave of hopelessness rolls over him. He sways.

The tracker can see everyone who has come and gone this way. The sandshoe girl and the sandal girl and the man. Even the old lady, once, with a stick as far as the word tree. On the track, in places, the rain has washed away their presence, but here through the leaves, leading away in front of him, they are obvious. As glaring as a set of train tracks.

There are the marks of a startled pademelon, a small ant nest caved in by a careless foot. This makes him drop to his haunches, cigarette dangling from his mouth.

He already smells the ash of the ruin.

Glass follows the tracker, tries to imitate his footsteps but the rocks close up their faces to him and he stumbles and swears. Somewhere, further away, there is the tremulous rushing of water.

‘Is there another creek?’

‘There are creeks everywhere up here,’ says Waldron. ‘Magic water. Comes right out of the rocks.’

Glass thinks it possible that he will have a heart attack. He’s always prided himself on his level-headedness. He’s seen terrible things. Sorted out terrible business. But up here he feels momentarily lost. It takes his breath away.

Waldron shows him where the fallen tree has been used many times as a passage out of the gully.

‘You’ve got to be shitting me,’ Glass says.

Waldron laughs around his smoke, crinkles up his eyes.

Fat old bastard copper, he thinks.

In the end, when they have climbed until he thinks his legs will crumple beneath him, Glass feels the land curve away. He doesn’t like it; it feels as though it’s slipping away, dropping off into nothing. The trees begin to thin. There is a jumble of great rocks, iron-coloured, patterned with moss, and when Glass looks up from his feet he sees that the earth gives way to a small gorge where a waterfall roars. The sunlight is dazzling in the rift; the land laid out before them is startling in the white glow. Glass shields his eyes.

He shakes his head.

He hasn’t really expected to see such a thing up here.

There it is, the burnt-out smear of a dwelling, just a little back from the lip of the gorge. A small place, a hut really, all hardwood and coloured glass, the tin roof collapsed across the charred stumps. The trees surrounding the tiny clearing are blackened too, but not burnt. Rain must have stopped the blaze.

Glass looks at the falls, at Waldron, who seems spooked by the place. He picks up a pink stone from the ground and holds it in his hand, thinking, then walks toward the ruin.

Patrick Lovell goes to work at half past five each morning, six days a week. Rose hears him, his feet hitting the floor, the scratch of his zipper, the rustle of his raincoat, the flick of his lighter. He pinches her as he passes. Ruffles her hair.

‘See you, Rose,’ he says. ‘Behave yourself.’

She turns onto her side and ignores him.

The cool blue morning light creeps into the little caravan window. It’s Saturday and she’s thinking of the hut in the trees. It’s the perfect type of day to go. She should get up right now, get dressed, start walking, but she doesn’t. When she thinks about the mountain and finding that place, part of her lifts, inflates, soars. She must try to push that part down. It’s like trying to fit a hot air balloon inside a tiny pocket. It’s a stupid idea, she tells herself.

Stupid idea, stupid idea, stupid idea.

She’s angry with her father. He’s not his normal self. Something has happened to him. He’s mad with not drinking. He’s permanently wired. Like he’s been electrocuted, his hair stands on end, his black eyes burn. In the evenings, when he fillets a fish, he says, ‘I’m the best banana picker this place has ever seen. I’m a gun banana picker, darling. I am a master banana picker, till now I’ve missed my calling in life.’ She knows where such sarcasm usually leads, but the words never come. There is no, ‘I’m just going out for a while.’

Whenever Mrs Lamond sees Rose’s father, she smiles at him, her face puckering up like the folds in a handbag. She smells of rubbing alcohol and fish and chips. She’s taken to wearing low-cut tops and leaning forward, ever so slightly, when she speaks to him.

But it isn’t just that. Rose is really angry with her father because of the problem with Pearl. She came to the caravan yesterday to work on their French project. Rose suggested they climb to the cove but Pearl said no.

‘Perhaps secret coves aren’t your thing,’ said Rose. ‘Perhaps you prefer small book exchanges run by dirty old men.’

‘He’s not a dirty old man. He’s not even old,’ Pearl protested. ‘He’s completely . . . cultured. He’s been everywhere.’

Rose closed her eyes and sighed.

‘Anyway, I’m
très
bored,’ Pearl said. ‘We really do need to make this guillotine if we’re going to pass French.’

‘A guillotine?’ said Rose’s father, hovering too close. ‘Now that sounds interesting.’

He collected cardboard from the back of Mrs Lamond’s kiosk and laid it out on the ground in front of the caravan.

‘Now, let’s think, girls,’ he said.

I wish you’d fuck off, Rose thought.

Her father couldn’t stop looking at Pearl and Pearl was aware of it. She just kept talking and talking, though, in true Pearl fashion: ‘Did you know that Marie Antoinette was only fourteen years old when she was married to the dauphin, that’s younger than us, and when she became queen she was only eighteen, which is not much older than us, can you imagine that, just going to another country right now and becoming a queen and having everything you ever wanted, jewels and shoes and dresses . . . I think it’d go to your head, I mean, don’t you, Rose? What would you do if you were in that situation?’

Rose wanted to say something but she didn’t. It wasn’t a very kind thing.

‘Let them eat cake and all that,’ said Patrick Lovell, scratching his bare brown chest.

Rose closed her eyes. Her father’s eyes were coal black, about to ignite. She’d never seen him so interested in one of her school friends. He didn’t know where to look: his eyes settled on Pearl, he tore them away, they settled again.

But she’d never had a friend like Pearl, either. Not one with such a face, who washed her hair in the rain and read books in Russian and who constantly exploded with information, spewing it like a trail of stars, and who was so good and kind and utterly friendly. Rose felt like a thunderstorm beside her. Pearl just shone and shone and shone, and even after she left a room some of her light remained.

‘I think what we’ll do is cut two frames whole, then tape them together,’ said her father. ‘And into that we’ll put the sliding blade, we can use a bit of baling twine, and then we’ll get some silver spray paint.’

‘Love your work, Mr Lovell,’ said Pearl. ‘We knew you’d come up with something.’

Rose had never heard her father called Mr Lovell in her life. There was a pause. She could feel him thinking; he was going to ask her, she knew it, he was going to ask Pearl whether he could draw her, sketch her, paint her. It was exactly the same as asking to touch her. The sea sighed up onto the shore and out again. He said nothing.

Rose gets out of bed, brushes her teeth at the tiny sink, dresses, walks down to the beach. The sea is almost still, reflecting the clouds. The soldier crabs have left their sand jewellery on the shore. Hers are the first footprints, she looks back at them as she walks toward the rocks to climb to her secret cove.

Rose could climb to the cove with her eyes closed. She leaps across the rocks, knows exactly where to put her feet. But the sense of satisfaction she felt in the beginning – of arriving at the perfect place and sitting alone, digging her toes into the sand – has vanished. She feels lonely there.

She thinks dangerous black thoughts about her father. She’d like to be away from him. She knows it’s possible. She’s seen kids her age before, on their own, washing at service stations and hitchhiking on the outskirts of cities.

The sound of a boat motor rouses her from her angry thoughts. A tinnie is making its way into the cove, the flat silver water breaking behind it. She sees it’s Murray Falconer and shakes her head. He rides right onto the sand, lifting the outboard in time, smiling broadly.

‘I thought you’d be here,’ he says.

‘What do you want?’

He comes across the sand toward her. His legs are ridiculously long, the hairs on them golden, his board shorts wet. His hair is sticking every which way; none of the blue is left.

‘I just thought I’d visit, that’s all,’ he says. ‘And see if you wanted to go for a boat ride.’

He motions to the old tinnie, the most dilapidated boat she has ever seen.

‘It doesn’t look very safe,’ says Rose.

‘It’s safe,’ says Murray.

‘How old is it?’

‘Dunno, it was my granddads,’ he says.

‘Shit.’

‘Come on,’ he says, ‘I can show you an even better beach than this one.’

The sun is so bright on the boat that she sometimes has to close her eyes. She’s in her worst clothes, her climbing clothes: a pair of baggy shorts and an old black t-shirt flung over a bikini top. Her feet stink inside her sneakers.

‘Don’t look so nervous,’ says Murray.

‘I just don’t want this thing to sink,’ she says.

She hasn’t tied back her hair completely. Tendrils escape and blow across her face.

‘How come you never smile?’ he says.

That question hurts her. It’s been asked before, and the hurt makes her angry. An old bruise touched.

‘It isn’t in my nature,’ she says.

‘Bullshit,’ says Murray, laughing, and he cranks the outboard motor full-throttle. The prow of the boat leaps out of the water and slams down again as he turns out to open sea.

‘You’re a wanker,’ she shouts.

He guides the boat around the rocks and toward the next bay, which is even smaller, a tiny deep water inlet without sand. The rainforest reaches right down to the sea. The boat rocks gently on the waves, making her drowsy. The surface of the water is alive with twisting ribbons of light, and she trails her finger through them. A huge turtle swims beneath the boat, and she peers over the edge until it has disappeared. Murray points up to the rocks where there is the shimmer of a waterfall.

‘Have you ever climbed on the mountain?’ she asks.

‘To Weeping Rock? Yeah. Why?’

‘I’d like to climb there,’ she says.

‘It can be arranged,’ he says in his terminator voice.

She shakes her head and tries not to laugh.